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RECOLLECTIONS OF 
SEVENTY YEARS 




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RECOLLECTIONS 
OF SEVENTY YEARS 

By F. B. SANBORN 

OF CONCORD 
IN TWO VOLUMES 



VOLUME ONE 




BOSTON 



JIICHARD G. BADGER 

^ - THE GORHAM PRESS 
1909 



COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY F. B. SANBORN 

a \* All Rights Reserved 







The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



CONTENTS 

VOLUME I 

PAGE 

Preface ix 

Chapter I. 
Preuminary 13 

Chapter II. 
National Politics — ^1856-1861 .... 35 

Chapter III. 
Kansas and Virginia 79 

Chapter IV. 
Concord and North Elba 108 

Chapter V. 
Virginia and Kansas 134, 

Chapter VI. 
Brown at the Kennedy Farm .... 168 

Chapter VII. 
The Harper's Ferry Alarm 187 

Chapter VIII. 
Personal Replevin 208 

Chapter IX. 
Aftermath of the John Brown Foray . . 219 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

VOLUME I 
F. B. Sanborn, at 76 Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Sanborn Homestead, Hampton Falls . . . 14t 

The Leavitt Homestead, Hampton Falls ... 14 

The Sanborn Household, 1868 18 

Dr. S. G. Howe, 1855 50 

John Brown, 1857 76 

From John Brown's Notes for a Speech ... 92 

Log Cabin of Rev. S. L. Adair 98 

Mr. Adair in His Cabin 98 

Jason Brown, 1875 ISl; 

Ruth Brown Thompson 1S4j 

F. B. Sanborn, Mi. 25 134 

D. W. Wilder, ^t. 60 134 

John Brown, 1859 142 

Emerson's and Thoreau's Autographs . . . 186 

Edwin Morton, 1885 188 

Col. James Montgomery 188 

Harriet Tubman, Fugitive Slave 188 

F. B. Sanborn, I860, ^Et. 28 188 

Cabin of Owen and Jason Brown near Pasadena . 198 
Funeral of Oliver Brown and Others at North Elba, 

1900 198 

Autographs of Thoreau and Aleott .... 202 
Arrest of F. B. Sanborn, drawn by Champney, 

April 3, 1860 210 

Autograph Letter of Dr. S. G. Howe . . . 224 



PREFACE 

THIS may be termed a book of Old Age; 
and few themes have been more written 
about. But seldom have the young taken 
it for their theme, nor can a very young 
person know what age actually is. I remember, 
when a boy of eleven, looking at my father when 
he was approaching forty, and wondering if I 
should ever be so old as he then seemed. Well, here 
I am, nearly twice that age — and yet not feeling in 
myself that inactive and morose condition so often 
associated with advanced years. Shakespeare's old 
Mortimer on his deathbed typifies another spirit in 
age — saying to his nephew, the ambitious York — 

But now thy uncle is removing hence, 

As princes do their seats, when they are cloyed 

With long continuance in a settled place. 

Such lordly condescension toward this mundane 
life is not to be generally expected — perhaps should 
not be encouraged in Christians — but it has its ad- 
vantages. The love of life is natural, and probably 
stronger in the old than the young, judging by my 
own experience, who at seventeen was more ready 
to leave this world than at seventy-five. Yet one 
must not cling to earthly life too closely. Emer- 
son opened his essay on Old Age with an allusion 
to President Quincy's speech at the Phi Beta din- 



X Preface 

ner of 1861, when in his ninetieth year. I missed 
that, but heard his shorter speech the day before at 
the Commencement dinner in Harvard Hall. The 
hale old man made a jest, and in so doing illus- 
trated that strange fact, of inlieritance from a sin- 
gle ancestor out of the thousands from whom each 
one of us is descended. Shortly before, at the 
Hasty Pudding Club I had seen a young Quincy, 
his grandson, acting in a comedy (as I had done 
seven years before, in the same place), and he 
twisted his expressive face exactly as the grand- 
sire did afterwards in his joke at the Commence- 
ment dinner. 

We inherit our capacity for age, as we do our 
stature and complexions; and we must use well 
what was bequeathed, or we may curse the heri- 
tage. Life is a loan, not a chattel, as Lucretius so 
well said — 

Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu. 

We must pay for its use, and if we waste it must 
make it good or give it up. Whether this new and 
furious practice of athletics prolongs life I doubt; 
it makes the young stronger, more agile, more ex- 
pert; but is as likely to hasten death as to defer it. 
Yet there is a view of long life worth mentioning, 
as that of a very wise and heroic person, John 
Brown of Osawatomie, of whom I have much to 
tell in the pages of this book. Writing from his 
Virginia prison, under sentence of death, forty- 
nine years ago, he said: 



Preface xi 

" I have enjoyed much of life, and have been remarkably 
prosperous, having early learned to regard the welfare 
and prosperity of others as my own. I have never re- 
quired a great amount of sleep ; so that I conclude that I 
have already, though not quite 60, enjoyed full an average 
of working hours with those who reach their threescore 
years and ten. I have enjoyed life much; why should I 
complain on leaving \i? I firmly believe that God reigns, 
and that he overrules all things in the best possible 
manner." 

My view of life is quite that of my good old 
friend, the convict of Virginia. There is no better 
preparation for old age than such opinions ; and my 
own experience has confirmed them. It was this 
tendency in myself which admitted me easily to the 
Concord circle of writers, to which, spiritually. 
Brown belonged, in spite of his Old Testament 
theology, which wore thin, as life advanced. Variety 
in unity was the Concord spirit, exemplified in 
Alcott, in Emerson, and perhaps most strikingly 
in Thoreau. His love of wild Nature and the In- 
dian mode of life was one side of that singular 
character. But there was quite another side; a 
gentle, poetic aspect, in which the bow and arrow 
were laid apart, the flute taken up, and the soul 
attuned to melody. In this mood he was Virgilian ; 
the shepherds of Mantua and the i-eeds of the 
Mincio never appeared to me quite so probable as 
when I rambled with him in Walden Woods or Es- 
tabrook Farm, or swam the Assabet on our way to 
the hill Anursnac. To compose verses and en- 
wreathe our Yankee life with pastoral garlands 



xii Preface 

then seemed natural and easy, as in his epigram on 
' Smoke.' Here was the spirit of the Walden years 
crystallized into a stanza; here was the much in 
little, which is the secret of Concord authorship. 
Mystical were other utterances of the man, like this : 

I hearing get who had but ears. 

And sight, who had but eyes before ; 
Moments I live, who lived but years, 

And Truth discern, who knew but Learning's lore. 

The neglect of fame in Concord was sometimes 
from pride, as in Hawthorne, or carelessness, as in 
Channing, or humility, as in Emerson ; but usually 
it proceeded from a clear view of its unworthiness, 
when contrasted with the inner motive and reward 
of the mystic. More than any writers of their cen- 
tury, they threw themselves at the feet of that 
' Love whose other name is Justice,' as Emerson 
said ; and their serene confidence, occasionally pass- 
ing into spiritual pride, was born of this devotion 
to an ideal service — not Pantheistic, though it used 
the phrases of Pantheism, and as far as possible 
from the modern heresy of the Agnostics. This 
is their chief title to a place in literary history; 
they came within the scope of the Apostle's predic- 
tion of what will never fail; but " whether there be 
prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, 
they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it 
shall vanish away." In this decay of learning, this 
frustration of intellectual vanity, this displacement 
of one science by another — each boasting itself im- 



Preface xiii 

perishable, and each perishing — ^the soul of man 
must ever take sanctuary with that poet who cried — 

I will not doubt the love untold 

Which not my worth nor want hath bought ; 
Which wooed me young, and wooes me old. 

And to this evening hath me brought. 

In the twenty-four chapters of these volumes, only a 
part of what I remember has even been touched on ; 
and I have given up the original intent to relate my 
connection with public charity and Social Science, 
which occupied me much for more than thirty years. 
That story may be told hereafter, and other mat- 
ters may be dealt with, but here chiefly I deal with 
the events of my first forty years. 

The portraits, views and fac-similes which I have 
inserted, at the request of the publisher, are mostly 
hitherto unpublished, or else so long since or so pri- 
vately printed that they ^vill be new to most who 
see the book. Errors will be found in its pages, but 
not of intention. I have had my share of contro- 
versy, but seldom in personal quarrels; usually in 
behalf of others, for whom I sought to present the 
case as they could not or would not ; and I am never 
so well pleased as when truthfully corrected, as I 
often have been and expect to be. 

F. B. S. 

Concord, December 15, 1908. 



POLITICAL LIFE 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF SEVENTY YEARS 

CHAPTER I 

^- J.V ^x J.V. i is 

Preliminary "'"""' 

THIS day, July 6, 1908, 1 begin such Rec- 
ollections of my life and my acquaint- 
ances as occur to me, and have not been 
published elsewhere; including, however, 
many things which I have printed publicly or pri- 
vately during the past half century; in course of 
which I have recalled and written out particulars 
that may be useful to me in this volume. Many 
of these have appeared in my " History of New 
Hampshire," or in the Granite Monthly, a New 
Hampshire local magazine; in the Springfield Re- 
publican, to which I have contributed for more than 
fifty years ; in the Boston Cominonwealth, between 
1862 and 1868, and of late years in the printed 
proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety. Having recently published there something 
more than 100 pages concerning the early history 
of Kansas, I may also draw from that source some 
facts of importance. 

I am now well along in my seventy-eighth year, 
having been born (on the estate of my ancestors 
for six generations, at Hampton Falls, N. H., and 
in a dwelling house now 165 years old) on the 15th 
of December, 1831 ; the son of Aaron Sanborn, 
then Town Clerk of the small municipality, and 



14 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Lydia Leavitt, his wife — the fifth of their seven 
children, of whom the eldest died in infancy. I 
was the second son, my older brother, the late Dr. 
Charles Henry Sanborn, being ten years my senior, 
and my youngest brother, Joseph Leavitt Sanborn, 
who died at St. Louis, Mo., in 1872, being twelve 
years younger than myself. An intermediate 
brother, Lewis Thomas Sanborn, was born in Oc- 
tober, 1834; and my two sisters, Sarah Elizabeth 
and Helen Maria, had been born, respectively, in 
1823 and 1830. My name, which is peculiar in its 
arrangement (Franklin Benjamin, instead of the 
customary Benjamin Franklin), is due to a whim 
of my father, who, as Town Clerk, could enter me 
by any name he pleased. I was really named for 
my grandfather, Benjamin Sanborn, and his 
father of the same name, which he took from a 
worthy uncle. Deacon Benjamin, grandson of the 
first emigrant Sanborn, John by name, who was a 
grandson of the founder of Hampton, Rev. 
Stephen Bachiler, an Oxford scholar of Queen 
Ehzabeth's reign. But my Grandmother Leavitt, 
when I went to see her in the fine house under the 
four elms on the Kensington road, in view of the 
lovely Kensington hills, used to put her gentle 
hand on my head and call me " her little Dr. Frank- 
lin," and so the great doctor's surname was given 
me for a middle name. But my father, foreseeing 
that I should be called " Frank," as I always have 
been, declared that his son should not be known by 
his middle name, and therefore registered me in 
the reverse order of the two names. 




DR. SANBORN'S HOME, HAMPTON FALLS. OLD HOMESTEAD 




THE LEAVITT HOMESTEAD, HAMPTON FALLS 



Preliminary 15 

It is a serious thought that I am now several 
years older than my father, who died in 1866, at 
73, and but a few months younger than my 
Grandfather Leavitt, the squire of his neighbor- 
hood, who died before he was 78, in 1852. But my 
Grandfather Sanborn hved to be 87, and my 
mother to be 83— so that I may still have several 
years of inherited longevity before me. It is from 
the mother's side that we four brothers and my 
younger sister take our physical inheritance, 
though not her extreme beauty. She was of fair 
complexion, good feminine stature, with blue eyes, 
thick jet-black hair, a brilliant color, and a most 
amiable expression. My father was brown-haired, 
with dark eyes and of tall and slender stature, 
though of stalwart strength; a daring horseman, 
and deft with his hands for almost any farming 
or mechanical labor. His mood was serious, and 
in his later years stoical, with a touch of the cynic ; 
upright and charitable, but seldom gracious, except 
to the poor, and rather severe with his children, 
who grew up to hold opinions quite unlike his own. 
In this he was the reverse of his father, who was 
the type of a smiling English yeoman, full of good 
will and hospitality, and at peace with all the world. 
He died when I was sixteen, but I do not remember 
that I ever heard from him a harsh or offensive 
word. In my childhood I slept with him, and had 
much of his society at other times. One of my 
earliest recollections is of being put early into his 
great bed, by which my beautiful mother r.at and 
sung to me in her sweet voice, to a Hebrew air — 



16 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Hush, my dear — He still and slumber! 

Holy angels guard thy bed; 
Heavenly blessings without number 

Gently falling on thy head. 



This was before I was three years old; and soon 
after I recall trying to lift my little legs up a steep 
flight of stairs, which I never could identify after- 
ward, until many years later I found they were 
the garret stairs in my great-grandfather's house, 
near Munt Hill. 

My two great-grandmothers, neither of whom I 
ever saw, Anna Towle and Esther Towle (who 
were second cousins), seem to have introduced into 
the Sanborn and the Leavitt families the tall stat- 
ure and great strength that distinguished some of 
their descendants. Anna Towle, the widow of 
Benjamin Sanborn, owned this old house near 
Munt Hill (a ledge celebrated in tradition as the 
occasional home of an Indian chief) , and her gi- 
gantic son John lived in a cottage near by. A 
younger son, Jeremy, his mother's darling, died at 
nineteen, in her house (1786) , and she is said never 
to have sat at her table with the household after- 
ward, though she lived until 1823, when she must 
have been ninety years old. Her young son's tall 
clock then fell to his brother, my grandfather, and 
still ticks the solemn time in the " clock-room " of 
the house where I was born — the large room where 
in winter we dined, and where I studied Latin, 
French, Greek, and German, before I ever thought 
of going to Harvard College. The facilities for 



PrelimiTiary 17 

so many languages were furnished by what re- 
mained of the church Hbrary " for the use of the 
Ministry," given by Dr. Langdon, the parish 
clergyman, a retired president of Harvard; and 
by the text-books which my brother Charles bought 
for his own studies. Dr. Langdon's meeting- 
house was near by, on what was originally a town- 
common and parade-ground, and earlier a garrison 
palisade, with a schoolhouse near the garrison, in 
the time of Indian dangers. The meeting-house 
was built shortly before the Revolution, and in 
its loft were kept the military stores for that and 
the next English war. The Parsonage stood cor- 
nering on another little common, in front of my 
grandfather's house, and Dr. Langdon and Parson 
Abbot, his successor, were the nearest neighbors of 
my ancestors from 1780, when Dr. Langdon indig- 
nantly withdrew from his insulted presidency, until 
1827, when Mr. Abbot retired to his hill-farm in 
Windham, twenty miles inland. In this half- 
century (almost) the foundation of a reading and 
studious community was laid in my native town- 
ship; both these clergymen being learned scholars, 
fond of disseminating culture among their parish- 
ioners. Both founded local libraries — Dr. Lang- 
don of Latin, Greek and historical folios, quartos, 
octavos, and pamphlets; and Parson Abbot a "so- 
cial" lending library wholly in English, and more 
popular in its quality. Both were customarily kept 
in the Parsonage, and were open to me, a school- 
mate of the sons of successive parsons, and their 
playmate on the little triangular common where 



18 Recollections of Seventy Years 

the Exeter road, Hampton old-road and Kensing- 
ton crossroad came together. From this Social li- 
brary, of which my father was a shareholder, I 
borrowed and read "Plutarch's Lives" (Lang- 
horne's translation) before I was eight years old, 
and had read most of its few hundred books before 
beginning, at about fourteen, to read the Langdon 
volumes. At the age of eleven a lively young 
schoolmaster. Barber, of Epping, induced me to 
begin the Greek grammar, and I had learned the 
alphabet and the first paradigms when my father 
sent word to my teacher that I was too young for 
that study. I was ah-eady entered in Latin, and 
read along by myself for several years in Liber 
Primus, Nepos, the "Colloquies of Erasmus" (of 
which, as well as of Terence, I found a copy in 
the Langdon library) , and Virgil. I took up Greek 
again in 1846, at the age of fifteen or earlier, and 
have never given it up since. 

My religious education was hardly so early and 
continuous as my literary studies. My grand- 
parents in both families, and their fathers, had been 
loyal parishioners of Dr. Langdon; but after his 
death, in 1797, although, from our own house, so 
near the church, the family went to meeting in the 
old way, my Grandfather Leavitt, the JefFersonian 
justice of the peace, more for political than spir- 
itual reasons, I fancy, joined the seceding Baptists, 
and refused to pay his church-rates, which were 
then assessed by the town. This led to his arrest, 
and made him more a political leader than before; 
for while the Congregationalists or the " standing 




THE SANBORN HOUSEHOLD, 1868 
On the Croquet Ground, Hampton Falls 
The Figures (from left to right) are Sarah and Helen, Mrs. Li/dia Sanborn, Miss 
Hannah Leavitf, a niece of Mrs. S., Mrs. F. B. Sanborn, with her son Thomas and his 
cousin Mary Sanborn, the doctor's child. 



Preliminary 10 

order" were generally Federalists, the sects (Bap- 
tists, Methodists, etc.) were apt to be JefFersonian 
Republicans. Squire Tom's first commission as 
justice was given him by John Langdon, the Jef- 
fersonian leader in New Hampshire, and he was 
proud of that honor. Every succeeding Governor 
renewed the commission, until my grandfather's 
death, in 1852; and he continued to be a Demo- 
cratic leader in Rockingham County until the party 
hopelessly divided on the issue of Texas annexa- 
tion, in 1844-5. Meanwhile he had left the Bap- 
tists, who were Calvinists, and organized a small 
Universalist society in Hampton Falls, of which 
my father (his son-in-law) and his brother, Joseph 
Sanborn, were members, and which their father, 
" Grandsir Sanborn," good-naturedly joined, hav- 
ing already given up his Federalist politics and 
followed Adams, at first, and then Jackson, into 
the reorganized Democracy, in 1828-30. These 
Universalists never settled a pastor, but had preach- 
ing in schoolhouses and private parlors for a few 
years, set up a theological library, the books of 
which were soon distributed among the faithful; 
and eventually, about 1838, became Unitarians, 
under the pastorates of Rev. Stephen Farley, Rev. 
Linus Shaw, and Rev. Jacob Caldwell, all suc- 
cessors in the old parsonage of Langdon and Ab- 
bot. But neither of my grandfathers, nor my 
father and his brother, went often to church, al- 
though the women of their families did ; and it was 
not required of me, as a child, to go regularly, or 
to attend the Sunday school. I read the Univer- 



20 Recollections of Seventy Years 

salist and Unitarian books, was familiar with the 
Bible, and at the mature age of nine, after reading 
how Origen and other Greek fathers believed in 
final salvation for all, I declared myself a Uni- 
versalist. I believe I never heard a Universalist 
preacher until I entered college, but took up the 
habit of going among the Baptists, the Congrega- 
tionalists, and others, wherever there was good 
preaching and singing. This wandering habit con- 
tinued until the more advanced type of Unitarians 
attracted my attention — Wentworth Higginson, 
James Richardson, Horatio Wood and A. A. Liv- 
ermore (both sons-in-law of Parson Abbot), and 
James Freeman Clarke — and I became a constant 
reader of Mr. Clarke's Christian World, a Boston 
weekly that still seems to me the best religious 
newspaper Boston issued in my time — too good, in 
fact, to be long supported. 

This brings me to my sixteenth year, when my 
literary career may be said to have fairly begun. 
In mature life I have had, in a humble way, four 
distinct careers — political, literary, socially refor- 
matory, and journalistic or publicist. Of these, 
the political was first developed, and then the liter- 
ary. 

In a democracy like ours (and New Hampshire 
in my boyhood was more nearly a pure democracy 
than any region, not excepting modern Greece, 
which I have since visited) it is singular how early 
the political instinct is developed and stimulated. 
My relatives (except my Boston uncles, who had 
become Whigs) being all Democrats, I was natu- 



Preliminary 21 

rally of that partisan faith as early as eight years 
old. Isaac Hill's New Hampshire Patriot had 
been taken by my father before I was born, and 
the old numbers remained stored up in the garret, 
along with almanacs and New Harnpshire Regis- 
ters as far back as 1800; these feasted my eager 
appetite for political fact and fiction. About 1840 
the weekly edition of the Boston Post came in, a 
brilliant and unprincipled journal, very entertain- 
ing to a boy. On the other side was the mild Exeter 
News-Letter^ anti-Democratic, and an occasional 
Portsmouth Journal^ Boston Mercantile Journal 
and other Whig newspapers, which the clergy and 
wealthier farmers and merchants, and my own 
Whig uncles, took, who sent copies to their trench- 
ant Democratic father, the old Squire. At his 
house and at our own, when he came there, as he 
often did, I heard the Jackson and Van Buren and 
Marcus Morton gospel of Democracy set forth in 
conversation ; and at school the boys took sides vig- 
orously in the campaigns. When General Harri- 
son was running against Van Buren in 1840, I had 
a bet of fourpence-happeny (6J cents) pending 
with Henry Shaw, the son of our neighbor, the 
parson — I going on nine, and he two years older. 
Of course I lost, although my State (of this I 
was very proud) stood loyally by " Little Van, the 
Used-up Man," as Henry termed the august Presi- 
dent. Little did we know of the principles in- 
volved — but were illustrating a maxim of my 
Grandsir Sanborn, " As the old cock crows, the 
young 'un larns." Two years later I was deeply 



22 Hecollections of Seventy Years 

interested in the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island, 
and took great pleasure in the schism of the vic- 
torious Whig party, occasioned by Clay's impe- 
rious demand and President Tyler's rather absurd 
resistance; taking my cue, of course, from the Bos- 
ton Post. But soon there came a change o'er the 
spirit of my dream. The invincible New Hamp- 
shire Democrats themselves quarreled, and in 1844 
our brilliant Congressman, Hale, of Dover, refused 
to go with the majority of his party for the annex- 
ation of Texas, which (under the sophistical name 
of "Re-annexation") had become the party shib- 
boleth. Polk was elected President upon that issue, 
after Van Buren had been refused a renomination 
because he opposed annexation. So had the New 
Hampshire Democrats done in 1843; but slavery 
demanded new territory, and the leaders of the 
party in New Hampshire — Franklin Pierce, ISIoses 
N orris and Levi Woodbury — resolved that Hale 
should be disciplined for his independence. He 
had received a renomination to Congress for the 
Rockingham and Strafford section of the State — 
all that was New Hampshire for the first century 
of its colonization — but Pierce traversed the coun- 
ties, demanding that a new nomination should be 
made, and an insignificant citizen, John Wood- 
bury, was put on the general ticket for Congress* 
The State had not then been districted, and the 
whole body of voters decided that Woodbury must 
not succeed Hale. Our section went unrepresented 
until a friend of Hale, Tuck of Exeter, was elected 
two years later, Hale having been chosen Senator 



Preliminary 23 

in 1846. This apparently trifling contest was the 
germ of great events, for Hale was the first Sen- 
ator chosen on a distinct anti-slavery platform ; and 
the revolt in the New Hampshire Democracy pre- 
figured the general reorganization of parties in 
1856. 

At the time of Hale's separation from his party 
I was just thirteen, but had been a reader and stu- 
dent of politics for some years. My elder brother, 
Charles, was twenty-three, and became a local 
leader in our section among the " Independent 
Democrats," as the new party was called. I joined 
it with him, though it was still eight years before 
I was entitled by age to vote. This introduced a 
political schism in both branches of our family, the 
Sanborns and the Leavitts. My father and grand- 
fathers remained in the old Democratic party, 
while my uncles in Boston, Benson and Joseph 
Leavitt, had become Whigs, and Benson was at the 
time senior alderman of Boston on the Whig side. 
Two of my father's sons and three of my grand- 
father's grandsons joined the new party; while my 
mother's cousins, Norris, the Congressman, after- 
ward Senator, and the Leavitts of Pittsfield, were 
active in the pro-slavery Democracy. The schism 
was never healed, and it was the occasion of much 
grief and some anger to my father to see his sons 
arrayed against him and his party at elections. In 
time, the Boston alderman also became warm in 
his opposition to the anti-slavery party; so that 
neither at home nor when I visited Boston did I 
find sympathy with my opinions among my elders. 



24 Recollections of Seventy Years 

This did not shake my youthful enthusiasm in the 
least. I had joined the party of youth, and among 
my schoolmates and younger friends, and in their 
families, there was much encouragement for my 
growing sentiments. The few clergymen whom I 
met were also apt to be anti-slavery men, but I do 
not recall that I ever heard an abolition orator until 
the spring of 1851, when I spent a week in Bos- 
ton, and listened to Theodore Parker and Wendell 
Phillips. I had read their speeches and sermons 
assiduously, however, in the newspapers that came 
to hand, and I was much versed in Congressional 
debates, then well reported in the Congressional 
Globe, to which my brother was a subscriber. 
He was also an assistant editor for a while of 
the weekly Independent Democrat, which I read 
constantly, from its establishment in 1845-6 by my 
brother's friend, George Fogg, afterward minister 
to Switzerland and Senator. It was the organ of 
the new party in New Hampshire, was very well 
edited, though with some personal bitterness (very 
much in fashion among New Hampshire parti- 
sans), and was the first periodical to which I con- 
tributed in print. This journal long since ceased 
to exist, and files of it can scarcely be found; it 
had much influence, however, in determining the 
politics of my native State from 1845 until the 
death of Abraham Lincoln, of whom its editor be- 
came an intimate friend during the presidential 
campaign of 1860. 

Mr. Fogg was secretary of the National Repub- 
lican Committee in that momentous contest, and 



PrelimiTiary 25 

had much to do with throwing the vote of New 
Hampshire for Lincoln in the Chicago convention 
which nominated him. Indeed, the New Hamp- 
shire Republicans in 1859 invited Mr. Lincoln to 
speak in their State election contest of that year, 
and I have heard :Mr. Fogg tell with animation 
how the feelings of the State Committee at Con- 
cord changed from depression to enthusiasm as 
Lincoln began and continued his one speech there. 
New Hampshire had seen many stoutly contested 
annual elections, and our friends there had heard 
all the good orators on both sides; but they had 
never heard Lincoln. His first appearance was not 
prepossessing, and when Mr. Fogg escorted him 
to the platform, and listened to his halting and 
awkward first sentences, his heart sank within him. 
Just then he was called out upon some business of 
the committee, and when he returned to the hall, 
after a few minutes, entered by another door. He 
could scarcely trust his eyes when he saw this hesi- 
tating and almost grotesque speaker commanding 
the audience by his tones and his gestures, and 
holding them as completely in his power as the 
graceful PhilHps or the majestic Webster could 
have done. That evening decided the votes of New 
Hampshire for Lincoln, when it was found that 
Seward could not unite the party as its candidate. 
So assured was Senator Seward that he would re- 
ceive the nomination that about the middle of May, 
1860, when the Chicago convention was assembling, 
he withdrew from the Senate and returned home 
to Auburn, N. Y., there to receive the expected 



26 Recollections of Seventy Years 

notification. As he was leaving, he reproached our 
Massachusetts Senator, Wilson, for not favoring 
his presidential aspirations, saying, " You have 
done more against my nomination than any mem- 
ber of the Senate." But the first two ballots 
showed that Seward was wrong and Wilson right; 
and on the third ballot Lincoln was nominated. 

During Senator Fogg's last illness, in which he 
lingered for some months, his old friend, Frank 
Bird, of Walpole, and I went up to visit him in his 
bachelor's home at Concord, N. H. He spoke with 
some difficulty, though in full possession of his 
memory and sagacity, and he was specially anxious 
to tell us an anecdote of President Lincoln and 
Senator Seward, of which he seems to have been the 
only relater. Lincoln had arrived in Washington, 
safe from the plot to assassinate him in JNIaryland, 
and was making up his cabinet. His wish was to 
place in it both Mr. Seward and Judge Chase. To 
the latter Mr. Seward strenuously objected, 
through his ancient friend and oracle, Thurlow 
Weed. The argument against Chase was fully 
presented, and finally Mr. Seward declared, by 
Mr. Weed, that he could not accept an appoint' 
ment in the same cabinet with Judge Chase. JNIr. 
Lincoln took the case under advisement. The next 
morning he met Mr. Fogg, who, as secretary of 
the campaign committee, had won his confidence, 
and told him the situation. Then, with a twinkle 
in his eye, he added, " We must give up both Sew- 
ard and Chase, I reckon; and I have drawn up 
here a list of the cabinet, leaving them both out." 



Preliminary 27 

Handing the list to Mr. Fogg, the latter read, with 
surprise and amusement, 

" Secretary of State, William L. Dayton of New Jersey ; 
Secretary of War, John C. Fremont of California ; 
Secretary of the Treasury (a New Yorker unfriendly 
to Seward) 

and so on. "I am sending this to Mr. Weed," 
said Mr. Lincoln. The effect was what both had 
of course anticipated ; when Mr. Seward found that 
a cabinet was planned in which he could have no 
personal influence, he intimated that he withdrew 
his objection to Mr. Chase, and both were ap- 
pointed, as the President had intended from the 
first. Indeed, when Mr. Lincoln in the December 
before had been visited at Springfield by Thurlow 
Weed, and the names of Seward and Chase were 
mentioned to him, it does not appear that Weed 
took any objection to their joint appointment— 
the men to whom INIr. Weed objected being Cam- 
eron and Montgomery Blair. The attempt to elim- 
inate Chase must, therefore, have been Seward's 
own motion, and was in the line with his later offer 
in writing, to Mr. Lincoln, that he would direct, as 
Secretary of State, the policy of the new adminis- 
tration : a proposal to which the President gave a 
prompt and sufficient negative. 

But I am far in advance of my storj^; for I 
never saw either Lincoln or Seward. Judge Chase 
I had known before the war, meeting him at Theo- 
dore Parker's in 1858. I saw him last at the Dart- 
mouth College Centennial of 1869, at the house 



28 Recollections of Seventy Years 

of Professor Sanborn, the father of my faraway 
cousin, Miss Kate Sanborn, and then I noticed that 
quivering of the features that indicated how near 
was the paralysis which ended his eminent career.* 
He was in his aspect one of the stateHest pubhc 
men of his time, and himself a New Hampshire 
man, like Webster, Greeley, Henry Wilson and 
Judge Woodbury, his contemporaries, though sev- 
eral of them older than himself. I co-operated 
with Mr. Bird and our associates of the Boston 
Bird Club in giving a public dinner to Mr. Chase 
when leaving the Treasury Department in 1864. 
When I began to continue Greek studies more 
systematically, in 1850, in preparation for college, 
I took lessons for a year from Prof. J. G. Hoyt, 
of Exeter, an accomplished graduate of Dart- 
mouth, and a teacher in the Phillips Exeter Acad- 
emy. He was also an ardent anti-slavery man and 
active in the politics of New Hampshire; and by 
him I was introduced, in 1851, to his townsmen, 
James Bell, for a short time Senator in Congress, 
and to Amos Tuck, the Independent Democratic 
Congressman who succeeded John Parker Hale. 
Entering the old Academy a year later, in Novem- 
ber, 1851, I was fitted to enter Harvard College in 
July, 1852, a year in advance, and joined the sopho- 
more class at Cambridge in September. I was still 
under age, but a pronounced member of the party 
organized by Senator Hale and his friends in 1845, 
and a warm opponent of Hale's and Hawthorne's 
Bowdoin College friend. Pierce, then the success- 

*He was stricken in 1870 and died in 1880. 



Preliminary 29 

ful candidate of the pro-slavery Democrats for 
President. I had seen Pierce and heard him ar^ue 
a criminal case in the Exeter Court House, ten 
years before, but had no acquaintance with him, 
nor with my second cousin, Norris, then Senator 
with Hale from New Hampshire, whom I had 
merely seen at my mother's house years before. My 
personal acquaintance was indeed quite limited, as 
my travels had been. 

A few visits to Newburyport and Portsmouth, 
the largest towns in my region, three visits to Bos- 
ton among my relatives, an early trip with my 
father to his cattle pasture in Pittsfield, and a walk- 
ing tour to the White Mountains and the upper 
valley of the Connecticut, returning through Leb- 
anon, Concord and Northwood, in the year 1850 — 
such was the range of my travels at the age of 
nineteen. But in the political field I had traveled 
far, and was reasonably familiar with the different 
parties and the character of their leaders. I had 
even seen two Presidents, actual and prospective, 
in one barouche at Portsmouth — Polk, making his 
presidential tour in 1846, with Buchanan, his Sec- 
retary of State, and slowly driving along a Ports- 
mouth street, near the residence of Judge Wood- 
bury, who, but for the serious fact of his death, 
was to have been the New Hampshire President in 
1853, instead of General Pierce. His nomination 
and election were assured, had he not died in Sep- 
tember, 1851, after ranking for five or six years 
among the eminent justices of the national Su- 
preme Court, to which place he was appointed by 



30 Recollections of Seventy Years 

President Polk in 1845. Between Polk and Pierce 
came the broken administration of General Taylor, 
followed by Vice-President 1 illmore, in whose 
time, and during the later years of Webster, the 
last of Henry Clay's compromises, the so-called 
" finality " measures of 1850, intended to quiet for- 
ever the agitation against negro slavery, were en- 
acted, and the Union was " saved " for the third or 
fourth time. 

All the political literature of the dismal years of 
the Mexican War and the territorial agitations that 
followed were well known to me in specimens — for 
nobody could possibly read it all ; and my mind was 
fully made up on the main question. That slavery 
was wrong, that we of the North were governed 
by a minority small in numbers but powerful in 
wealth and influence, made up of the slaveholders 
and their commercial and manufacturing allies at 
the North and West, and that the mass of the peo- 
ple must free themselves from this dominating 
aristocracy, were truths that appealed to my nat- 
urally democratic sentiments so early that I hardly 
remember when I thought otherwise. Yet I never 
gave in to the doctrine of the Garrisonians that the 
Union established by our fathers should be given 
up; although at times it seemed as if only in that 
way could the evil institution of slavery be thrown 
off. I was instinctively of the faith that our na- 
tional Constitution was an anti-slavery document, 
as Gerrit Smith and John Brown declared — and as 
in fact it proved to be, when the revolt of the slave 
States forced upon the nation the alternative of 



Preliminary 31 

emancipation or the destruction of national exist- 
ence. 

Although this was the turn of my mind, it was, 
of course, only gradually that I came to clear ideas 
on the subject. These ideas were much promoted 
by two or three strong influences. One was the 
National Era, a weekly journal published at Wash- 
ington, in which Whittier, INIrs. Stowe, and other 
good writers maintained the attitude of the voting 
emancipationists; another was Horace Greeley's 
Tribune, which, while adhering to the Whig party 
as long as it could, yet dealt the most trenchant 
blows at the monster of misgovernment which then 
controlled affairs in the United States. Another 
influence, and in my case the strongest, was the 
tenor of all good literature, of which I became very 
early and have long continued to be a general stu- 
dent. All literature worthy of the name is and 
must be on the side of freedom, though it may also 
be a maintainer of reasonable authority. For with- 
out freedom no good literature can be born or long 
exist. The poets are on the side of freedom, and 
the virtues and graces are so, too. 

My way of life at home on the farm, and the 
studies I pursued, were such as to foster an orig- 
inal turn of thought. The labor I performed w^as 
not hard, nor oppressive in its continuance; it was 
often solitary labor in the field or the woods, leav- 
ing the mind free to entertain its own thoughts. 
So far as it was social, or performed in the com- 
pany of others, it promoted conversation, and gave 
a ready mind access to all that store of homely wit 



32 Be collections of Seventy Tears 

and natural fact which was put to such wonderful 
use by Abraham Lincoln, who picked it up, as I 
did in a smaller way, by hstening to the talk and 
noticing the ways of the countryside. Following 
the mowers in the hay-field, or sitting ^\\\\\ parents 
and brothers and neighbors under an apple tree in 
summer, or beside a fire of boughs in the winter 
grove, what snatches of wit and wisdom have I not 
heard! Grinding sc}i:hes, repairing roads, making 
shoes or tools in the little shops, the best part of 
unconscious education may be acquired from the 
remarks made and pondered, the debates carried 
on, and the anecdotes related. I was never very 
shy or unsocial, made friends easily, and was toler- 
ated or praised by my elders, and never thought 
myself, so far as I remember, the most important 
person in any company, large or small, where I 
found myself. A husking-party, a game of 
checkers or of cards, a stroll in the pastures with 
young comrades, bearing guns and enlivened by 
dogs, tea parties and school examinations and even- 
ing debates in the district schoolhouse — such and a 
hundred other occasions for learning and practic- 
ing social good humor and the untaught lore of 
human nature, formed my character, such as it is, 
and made me, I dare say, a fair representative of 
mjTiads of my Xew England countrymen. In one 
thing I perhaps differed — in freedom from avarice 
or ambition. I never yearned for great wealth, nor 
sought for leadership or high place in the world; 
such leadership as I ma\^ have had (and most men 
of education take the lead in something) must have 



PreJiminary 33 

come from character, not from ambition. But 
along with this contentment in the station I have 
had went a firm resolve not to be domineered over 
b}^ others, either individuals or classes; and I saw 
no reason why I should take my opinions from the 
majority, or the cultivated minority — or from any 
source except my own much-considering mind. In 
this, no doubt, there was a certain pride, to which 
respectable sin rather than to the more conmion 
quahty of vanity it is hkely I have been too much 
inchned. 

Changing my residence to Cambridge, I still 
maintained my right to vote in my native to^vn of 
Xew Hampsliire, where, under the old law, I "had 
my wasliing and mending done " ; and my first vote 
was cast in March, 1853, at the State election fol- 
lowing the inauguration of our only Xew Hamp- 
sliire President. Pierce. He had received a ma- 
jority of 6700 in 1852: his party the next spring 
got but 5400, and in 1855. the last year I voted 
there, the Democrats went out of power in Xew 
Hampshire for twenty years. Tliis was the re- 
sponse of his native State to the support given by 
President Pierce to the extension of slavery, by 
promoting the repeal of the ^Missouri Compromise, 
in order to let slaverj^ into Kansas. He made 
a bad matter worse by f ollo^Wng the lead of Jeffer- 
son Davis, his Secretary of War, and appointing 
territorial ofiicers who tried to force slavery in. thus 
bringing on a state of civil war in Kansas. By 
this time, 1855-6, I was out of college and a voting 
citizen of Old Concord, as my to^^Ti has been called 



34 Recollections of Seventy Years 

for a century and a quarter, to distinguish it from 
the dozen or twenty Concords in various parts of 
the United States — all named in honor of the skir- 
mish by the Concord River which opened the war 
of the Revolution. The Kansas conflict gave me 
my first opportunity for important political activ- 
ity, and brought me into friendship with one of the 
heroic historical figures of the last century, John 
Brown, of Kansas and Virginia. 



CHAPTER II 

National Politics — 1854-1861 

CAMBRIDGE, the seat of Harvard Col- 
lege, being in 1852, even more than now, 
a suburb and appendage of Boston, my 
residence there from September, 1852, 
to March, 1855, when I went to reside in Concord, 
gave me the opportunity of knowing the men who 
afterward had much to do with shaping the policy 
of the nation. In April, 1851, I had seen General 
Banks, whose statue has this year been set up on 
Beacon Hill, near where I first saw him. He was 
then Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Rep- 
resentatives — a small but striking-looking man, al- 
most lost to my view (from the gallery) in the 
great chair, but with his long black hair and pierc- 
ing eyes attracting notice, as he did wherever he 
appeared for many years. I saw him in his glory 
and in his decline — for in later years his memory 
failed, so that he hardly knew what he was saying, 
although his graceful manner and polite tone sur- 
vived. The last conversation with him that I recall 
was at a luncheon in the Parker House, Boston, 
where I saw him and Mrs. Banks at a table for 
four, and joined them, thinking I might enliven by 
conversation the rather somber side of life then pre- 
sented to a man who had been very successful. I 

35 



36 RecollectioTis of Seventy Years 

introduced the subjects, and General Banks al- 
lowed me to do most of the talking, for he had 
fallen into a silence quite marked in contrast with 
his former readiness of speech, whether public or 
private. Mrs. Banks also listened and asked the 
needful questions, as I tried one topic after another 
in the hope of interesting the fading veteran. He 
seemed pleased, and responded here and there; but 
evidently he did not follow the talk very clearly. 
At last, turning to his wife, he said, in his magnifi- 
cent voice, " My dear, this is a very agreeable gen- 
tleman; may I ask you what his name is?" I had 
talked with him a hundred times, and he had known 
me as well as he knew his neighbors in Waltham, 
where he lived for half a century in a modest house, 
with a large tract of land, which, as the city grew, 
became valuable for house lots and for a park, and 
by its sale kept him from that degree of poverty 
which might otherwise have been his lot. He had 
no skill in the saving of money, and his general's 
pension for years was his chief income. 

No full memoir of General Banks has ever been 
published, although one or two campaign biog- 
raphies of him as a candidate had a good sale — he 
figuring therein as " The Bobbin-Boy of Wal- 
tham." Both he and Mrs. Banks had been cotton- 
mill operatives in their youth — a very common re- 
source of worthy maidens and young men who had 
their own way to make in the world. Their man- 
ners in after hfe would never have suggested so 
humble an employment, if there were any neces- 
sary connection between the manners and the early 



National Politics— 1854-1861 37 

occupation of distinguished persons, as plainly 
there is none. Banks from the first had an air of 
distinction, and an ambition which well became 
him. He desired to be a popular orator, and for 
this purpose he frequented every good actor and 
every famous speaker, whatever the style of the 
orator might be. He told me that he had seen on 
the American stage that interesting English actor, 
Bernard, whose description of General Washing- 
ton in his later years at INIount Vernon is one of 
the best we have of that truly great man. General 
Banks had seen the book, and agreed with me that 
it was an account of Washington that could not be 
spared from the many which profess to picture the 
man as he was. Bernard, from his profession, was 
apt to notice and catch the impression of a person's 
features and manner; and he also had an easy style 
which expressed readily what he wished to convey. 
As the account, though reprinted in America, does 
not seem to be widely known, I copy below its es- 
sential portions. General Banks is the only person 
I have met who had seen Bernard on the stage ; he 
was not a great actor, but a natural and pleasing 
one. As Banks was not born until January, 1816, 
and Bernard died in 1828, it must have been early 
in life that Banks saw him. 

John Bernard says, as reported by his son, Bayle 
Bernard : * 

" In July, 1798, I had been to visit an acquaintance 

on the banks of the Potomac, a few miles below Alex- 

* Retrospections of America, 1797-1811. By John Bernard, New 
York, Harper and Brothers, 1887. (Pp. 85-91.) 



38 Recollections of Seventy Years 

andria, and was returning on horseback, in the rear of 
an old-fashioned chaise, the driver of which was urging 
on his steed, when a lash, directed with more skill than 
humanity, took the skin from an old wound. The sudden 
pang threw the poor animal on his hind-legs, and, the 
wheel swerving upon a bank, over went the chaise, fling- 
ing out upon the road a young woman. The minute 
before I had perceived a horseman approaching at a 
gentle trot, who now broke into a gallop, and we reached 
the scene of the disaster together. The female was our 
first care; she was insensible, but had sustained no ma- 
terial injury. My companion supported her, while I 
brought some water in the crown of my hat from a spring 
some way off. The driver had landed on his legs, and 
having ascertained that his spouse was not dead, seemed 
well satisfied with the care she was in, and set about ex- 
tricating his horse. A gush of tears announced the re- 
turn of the lady to sensibility ; then, as her eyes opened, 
her tongue gradually resumed its oflice, as she poured 
forth a volley of invectives on her mate. 

" The horse was now on his legs, but the vehicle still 
prostrate, heavy in its frame and laden with half a ton 
of luggage. My fellow-helper set me an example of ac- 
tivity in relieving it of the external weight, and, when 
all was clear, we grasped the wheel between us, and 
righted the conveyance. The horse was then put in, and 
we lent a hand to help up the luggage. All this helping, 
hauling and lifting occupied at least half an hour, under 
a meridian sun in the middle of July. Our unfortunate 
friend somewhat relieved the task with his narrative. He 
was a New Englander who had emigrated to the South 
young, there picked up a wife and some money, and was 
now on his way home, having been ' made very comfort- 
able ' by the death of his father. When all was right, 



National Politics — 1854-1861 39 

and we had assisted the lady to resume her seat, he 
begged us to proceed with him to Alexandria and take a 
drop of ' something sociable.' Finding that we were un- 
sociable, he extended his hand, gripped ours as he had 
the heavy boxes, and, when we had sufficiently felt that 
he was grateful, drove on. 

" My companion, after an exclamation at the heat, 
offered very courteously to dust my coat — a favor, the 
return of which enabled me to take a survey of his person. 
He was a tall, erect, well-made man, evidently advanced 
in years, but appeared to have retained all the vigor and 
elasticity resulting from a life of temperance and exer- 
cise. His dress was a blue coat buttoned to the chin, 
and buckskin breeches. Though, the instant he took off 
his hat, I could not avoid the recognition of famihar 
lineaments, still I failed to identify him; and, to my sur- 
prise, I found myself an object of equal speculation in 
his eyes. A smile at length Hghted them up, and he ex- 
claimed, ' Mr. Bernard, I believe.' I bowed. ' I had the 
pleasure of seeing you perform last winter in Philadel- 
phia.' I bowed again, and he added, ' I have heard of 
you since from several of my friends at Annapolis. You 
are acquainted with Mr. Carroll .? ' I rephed that gen- 
tleman's society had made amends for much that I had 
lost in quitting England. He remarked, ' You must be 
fatigued. If you will ride up to my house, which is not 
a mile distant, you can prevent any ill effects from this 
exertion by a couple of hours' rest.' I looked round for 
his dwelling, and he pointed to a building which, the day 
before, I had spent an hour in contemplating. ' Mount 
Vernon ! ' I exclaimed ; and then, drawing back with a 
stare of wonder — ' Have I the honor of addressing Gen- 
eral Washington ? ' With a smile, whose expression of 
benevolence I have rarely seen equaled, he offered his 



40 Recollections of Seventy Years 

hand and replied, ' An odd sort of introduction, Mr. 
Bernard; but I am pleased to find you can play so active 
a part in private, and without a prompter.' I needed 
no further stimulus to accept his friendly invitation. As 
we rode up to his house, we entered freely into con- 
versation. 

" Flattering as liis inquiries were, from such a source 
(respecting my success in America, and my impressions 
of the country) my own reflections on what had just 
passed were more absorbing. Nine ordinary country gen- 
tlemen out of ten who had seen a chaise upset near their 
estate, would have thought it savored neither of pride 
nor ill-nature to ride home and send servants to its as- 
sistance. But I had witnessed one of the strongest evi- 
dences of a great man's claim to his reputation — the 
prompt, impulsive working of a heart which, having made 
the good of mankind its religion, was never so happy as 
in practically displaying it. On reaching the house we 
found that Mrs. Washington was indisposed; but the 
General ordered refreshments in a parlor whose windows 
took a noble range of the Potomac, and, after a few 
minutes' absence, rejoined me. 

" Whether you surveyed Washington's face, open, yet 
well defined, dignified, but not arrogant, thoughtful, but 
benign ; his frame, towering and muscular, but alert from 
its good proportion — every feature suggested a re- 
semblance to the spirit it encased, and showed simplicity 
in alliance with the sublime. The impression was that 
of a most perfect whole, something sacred as well as 
wonderful; a man fashioned by the hand of Heaven with 
every requisite to achieve a great work. Thus a feeling 
of awe and veneration stole over you. In conversation 
his face had not much variety of expression. A look of 
thoughtfulness was given by the compression of the mouth 



National Politics— 1854-1861 41 

and the indentation of the brow, which did not seem so 
much to disdain a sympathy with triviaHties, as to be in- 
capable of denoting them. Nor had his voice, so far as 
I could discover in our quiet talk, much change or rich- 
ness of intonation ; but he always spoke with earnestness, 
and his eyes, glorious conductors of the light within, 
burned with a steady fire which no one could mistake for 
mere affability. He spoke like a man who had felt as 
much as he had reflected, and reflected more than he had 
spoken. He touched on every topic that I brought before 
him with an even current of good sense, if he embellished 
it with little wit or verbal elegance. When I mentioned 
to him the diff"erence I perceived between the people of 
New England and of the South, he remarked, ' I esteem 
those people greatly ; they are the stamina of the Union, 
and its greatest benefactors. They are continually 
spreading themselves, too — to settle and enlighten less 
favored quarters. Dr. Franklin was a New Englander.' 
He added, ' I consider England the cradle of free prin- 
ciples, not their arm-chair ; liberty there is a sort of idol — 
people there are bred up in the belief and love of it, but 
see little of its doings. They walk about freely, but it is 
within high walls ; and the error of its government was 
to suppose that, after a portion of its subjects had 
crossed the sea to live upon a common, they would permit 
their friends at home to build up those walls about them.' 
" He considered the dramatic stage to be an indispens- 
able resource for settled society, and a chief refiner ; not 
merely interesting as a comment on social happiness by 
its exhibition of manners, but an agent of good as a 
school for poetry, holding up to honor the noblest prin- 
ciples. ' I am too old and too far removed to seek for or 
require this pleasure myself, but the cause is not to droop 
on my account. There's my friend, Mr. Jeff^erson, has 



42 Recollections of Seventy Years 

time and taste; he goes always to the play, and I'll intro- 
duce you to him.' A promise which he kept, and which 
proved to me a source of the greatest benefit and 
pleasure." 



General Banks was himself an actor in his youth- 
ful days, and might have risen to some eminence in 
that profession if politics had not drawn him aside. 
He thought John Bernard a fairly good actor, as 
he surely was a good observer and a pleasing 
wi'iter. Few have better described the essential 
character of Washington, as seen in his vigorous 
age. 

When Banks mentioned the Bernard incident to 
me his remarkable memory had not given way, and 
it was by virtue of that, rather than by anything 
original or profound in his thought, that he became 
a popular orator; but he had the fortune to make a 
deep impression on those who heard him for the 
first time; and he retained his popularity through 
many changes of circumstance and opinion. He 
entered the Massachusetts Legislature in 1840, and 
he did not leave Congress till 1890. He was Gov- 
ernor in 1858-59 and 1860. 

In his governorship and in his military life. Gen- 
eral Banks did not acquire a permanent fame; but 
it is likely that he was judged unfairly in both 
positions. His early connection with the disrepu- 
table Native American or " Know-Nothing " party 
brought about him as Governor associates who had 
not the confidence of men in established position, 
but were viewed as shifty adventurers. But he had 



National Politics — 1854-1861 43 

also attached friends of a different class, and there 
was not much fault to find with his measures while 
Governor. One of them in the year 1859 became 
famous, and was of service in the Civil War that 
soon followed — his State muster of the volunteer 
militia at Concord, in the plain long since chiefly 
occupied by the State Reformatory, along the 
Assabet River. It furnished a fine spectacle, and 
one of its brave sights was Governor Banks him- 
self, mounted on a black thoroughbred horse, re- 
viewing the troops, among whom was General B. 
F. Butler, then a major-general of militia. Banks 
was Governor also when the present King of Eng- 
land, then Prince of Wales, was officially received 
in Boston; and in the ceremonies then obligatory. 
Banks bore his part well. I saw the Prince in the 
street near the old Fitchburg Station in Boston, 
surrounded by his escort and the crowd — a slender, 
fair youth of eighteen, not handsome, but winning 
and amiable, as he hac since shown himself in his 
public capacity. 

On leaving the governorship at the beginning of 
1860, Banks introduced the custom of a valedictory 
address, for which his opponents (of whom I was 
then and afterward one) did not see so much occa- 
sion as he did. Coming home in the train that 
night, after readir^g the address, I asked my neigh- 
bor. Judge Hoar, elder brother of the Senator: 
" Why did Governor Banks think it necessary to 
make this address?" The Judge smiled sardon- 
ically and said: "I suppose for the same reason 
that the boy's father whipped him. Johnny was 



44 Recollections of Seventy Years 

out playing with other boys, when a vigorous rap- 
ping on the window by his father called him in- 
doors. Soon after he came out again, weeping and 
rubbing himself. ' Did he lick ye? did he lick ye? ' 
said the sympathizing gang. ' He did; oh, he did! ' 
' What for? ' ' For his own glory, I suppose.' And 
that," said Judge Hoar, " was the reason of the 
Governor's oratory to-day." 

Such was the way we were in the habit of joking 
about His Excellency in those days. When Tho- 
reau, who lived in Concord, near the railroad station 
where the Governor and his friends might alight 
in the days of the great Muster, M^as going down 
to the post office one of those days, he was met by 
a neighbor, who said, " Henry, where are you go- 
ing? " " I heard that the Governor of Massachu- 
setts is coming to Concord to-day, and I am after 
a lock to put on our front door." " Yes, but the 
General Court is coming up, too." " Oh, then I 
must put a lock on our back door." 

I have dwelt thus at some length on General 
Banks because he was the first of many Governors 
that I have known in the time of their reign, though 
I afterward knew several of his predecessors inti- 
mately — especially Governor Bout well and Gov- 
ernor Emory Washburn — the latter denied a re- 
election by the swelling of the Know-Nothing tide 
in 1854. When the new legislators came up to take 
the oath of office early in 1855, most of them being 
new and unknown persons, that had supplanted 
men of experience who formerly came to the Gen- 
eral Court, Governor Washburn is said to have re- 



National Politics — 1854--1861 45 

marked, after the oaths had all been taken, " You 
are now qualified, gentlemen — so far as taking the 
oath of office can qualify you, to sit as members of 
the General Court." To which the Secretary of 
State added the usual chorus, " God save the Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts! " 

So much for N. P. Banks, Speaker, Congress- 
man, Governor and Major-General, suggested by 
my sight of him in April, 1851, sitting in the 
Speaker's chair. In the same month I heard Theo- 
dore Parker and Wendell Phillips — the former in 
his famous Fast-day sermon after the return of 
Sims, the fugitive, to slavery, delivered April 10, 
1851. I did not then have the honor of his ac- 
quaintance, and my uncle, the ex-alderman and 
acting Mayor of 1845, whom I was visiting, was 
aggrieved that I went to hear Parker, concerning 
whom he had the common Whig opinion — that he 
was infidel and disorganizing, and was "resisting 
the govermnent." In July, 1852, while waiting 
for my college examination to be concluded, I went 
from this uncle's house in Charter Street across the 
way to the house of Rev. Edward Beecher, then 
preaching at the North End of Boston, to call on 
Mrs. Stowe, whom I there saw for the first time. 
She was in the height of her fame as the author of 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," one of the epoch-making 
books of the nineteenth century, which, after com- 
ing out in Dr. Bailey's National Era at Washing- 
ton in 1851-2, was published in Boston by Jewett 
and sold more than a quarter-million copies. She 
was a plain, affectionate and simple person in 1852, 



46 Recollections of Seventy Tears 

and I was interested to see the terms she was on 
with her youngest brother James, then hving in or 
near Boston, and whom I afterward knew under 
very different circumstances. Later in the year 
1852 I was introduced by my friend JMiss Ednah 
Littlehale, afterward the wife of Seth Cheney, the 
deHcate crayon artist, to the Alcott family, then 
living in Pinckney Street, Boston, and saw for the 
first time Louisa Alcott, who now has a wider audi- 
ence for her lively and pathetic fiction than even 
Mrs. Stowe had half a century ago. It was in this 
eventful year also that I became the friend of 
Theodore Parker, with whom I was afterward 
much associated, and whose manuscripts are now 
my property by the bequest of his wife. I was his 
executor, along with INIessrs. May and INIanly, in 
1860, and was selected by him as his posthumous 
editor — a task which I could not undertake for 
reasons I may give hereafter. In 1853 I heard 
Charles Sumner for the first time, in Faneuil Hall, 
and before then had become intimate with Dr. S. 
G. Howe, w^hose life by his daughter, JVIrs. Rich- 
ards, is this year completed. I had heard Colonel 
Higginson preach in my native town while he had 
a parish in Newburyport, and I made his personal 
acquaintance in 1853. I had called on Whittier in 
his cottage at Amesbury, and had heard Longfel- 
low lecture in Harvard College. In this same year, 
1853, in early Julj^ I called on Emerson at Con- 
cord, and became a frequent hearer of his inspir- 
ing lectures. Thus the circle of mj^ political and 
literary friends was formed in good part during 



National Politics— 1854.-1861 47 

my first two years in college, and when I had lately 
reached the age of one and twenty. To these 
friends many more were added as the next few 
years went by; but I lost that invaluable and be- 
loved friend, ]Miss Walker, of whom more will be 
said in my literary recollections. Her death oc- 
curred in August, 1854, while the country was in 
the midst of the agitation occasioned by the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, and the seizure of 
fugitive slaves under the wicked enactment of 
1850, in which Webster had concurred. Webster, 
with that fatal weakness of character which con- 
trasted forcibly with the native strength of his 
understanding, had fallen away from the lofty po- 
sitions he had early and often taken against the 
existence, and still more, the extension, of negro 
slavery; had made his evil 7th of March speech in 
1850, and had died in October, 1852, before he was 
able to cast his vote for a pro-slavery President 
from his native State. The evil he had done lived 
after him, and contributed something to the wicked 
effort of that New Hampshire President to force 
slavery into new territory which, by the Missouri 
Compromise, had been consecrated to free labor. 
In view of this very piece of infam5^ Webster had 
said, in 1845, when resisting the annexation of 
Texas: " The theory that the Constitution of 1787 
was made for the preservation, encouragement and 
expansion of slavery dates its discovery from a 
period long subsequent to the establishment of the 
government." That false theory, he went on to 
say: 



48 Recollections of Seventy Years 

" Declares that every new acquisition which Freedom 
shall make on her own soil, through the blessings of 
Heaven upon toil and enterprise, should be counterbal- 
anced by the incorporation into the body politic of an 
equal portion of exotic slavery ; and that the decline of 
such slavery through the operation of beneficent causes 
should be retarded by subjecting to its desolating in- 
fluence new regions, acquired by purchase or fraud or 
force." 

The practical issue of the enforcement of this 
malign theory of Calhoun and the Southern slave- 
masters by President Pierce, through Atchison of 
Missouri, Douglas of Illinois and Jefferson Davis, 
the residuary legatee of Calhoun's heresies, was in 
1854 the source of unavoidable civil war. It de- 
pended on the people of the North to say whether 
they would, in the words of Webster, " uphold the 
interests of slavery, extend its influence, and se- 
cure its permanent duration," or whether the ma- 
jority of the people of the United States, at the 
expense even of much blood and treasure (as in 
the Civil War), should carry out that professed 
object of the Constitution of Washington and 
Franklin, " To establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, pro- 
mote the general welfare, and secure the blessings 
of liberty to themselves and their posterity." These 
were the great interests really at stake in the po- 
litical contests from 1854 to 1861, and in the Kan- 
sas campaigns of 1856-58. Feeling this as warmly 
and foreseeing it as clearly in 1854 as it is now 
visible in retrospect, and aided in this clearness of 



National Politics— 1854-1861 49 

insight by the remarkable poHtical wisdom of Theo- 
dore Parker, I announced such opinions in one of 
my college declamations, and acted upon them 
steadily thereafter. I had the advantage of hear- 
ing, at the evening receptions of Parker in his open 
house on Exeter Place, both sides of the contro- 
versy, and all its varying phases, discussed by 
emancipationists and slaveholders, by followers of 
Webster in his change of sentiment, and by the la- 
conic and trenchant conversation of John Brown. 
Removing to Concord early in 1855, I there found 
the circle in which I moved holding much the same 
sentiments, modified by peculiarities of age and 
native character, in Samuel Hoar, father of the 
Senator, who had been insulted in South Carolina 
for maintaining the doctrines of the Constitution in 
that slave-trading region ; in Emerson, the calm ad- 
vocate of principles, and Thoreau, who went a step 
farther in his theories of government and society; 
and in Judge Hoar, who, without his father's cour- 
tesy and equity, had a pungency of wit and a power 
of indignation which made him a tower of strength 
in any cause that he took up. It was he who in- 
serted in the Republican platform of 1856 the 
striking phrase, "those twin relics of barbarism, 
polygamy and slavery "; and he had already, on his 
judicial bench, asserted the right of a people to 
disobey wicked laws, holding, with Jefferson, that 
there are " sacred and sovereign rights reserved in 
the hands of the people for cases of extreme neces- 
sity, and judged by the Constitution (of England) 
unsafe to be delegated to any other judicature." 



50 Recollections of Seventy Years 

He also believed in the doctrine laid down by Web- 
ster in January, 1845: 

" That government is a delegated and limited trust ; 
that all authority not conferred is reserved; and that, in 
fact, there are grave questions, lying deeper than the 
ordinary forms of government, and over which govern- 
ment, in none of its branches, has just control." 

This statement could have been accepted by 
Thoreau, and it was, in fact, the political theory of 
John Brown. It asserts the right and duty of rev- 
olution, and is the only theory upon which Ameri- 
can independence could be maintained in 1776. 
Josiah Quincy the elder, then in his ninety-second 
year, wrote to Judge Hoar in May, 1856, in the 
same revolutionary tenor with his father, the pa- 
triot of 1774: 

(May 27.) " I can think of nothing but the out- 
rages of slaveholders at Kansas, and the outrages 
of slaveholders at Wasliington " (the brutal assault on 
Sumner in the Senate chamber) ; " outrages which, if not 
met in the spirit of our fathers of the Revolution (and I 
see no sign that they will be) our liberties are but a 
name, and our Union proves a curse. But alas ! sir, I see 
no principle of vitality in what is called Freedom in these 
times. The palsy of death rests on the spirit of freedom 
in the so-called Free States." 

The tone of Mr. Quincy's letter, but less de- 
spairing, as befitted younger men, was that of the 
whole circle in which I lived in 1856, including 
then at Boston, John A. Andrew, afterward our 




DR. S. G. HOWE, 1855 



National Politics— 1854-1861 51 

War Governor; Frank Bird, founder of the Bird 
Club, which I joined about 1854, and in which I 
succeeded Mr. Bird (at his death in 1894) as pres- 
ident; also Sumner, Henry Wilson, Anson Bur- 
lingame. Dr. Howe, William S. Robinson (better 
known as "Warrington"), James Freeman 
Clarke, John M. Forbes, and many more of some 
distinction at the time and since. Among the most 
active in this very month of May, 1856, were Dr. 
Howe and George L. Stearns of Medford, with 
Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, N. Y., and T. W. Hig- 
ginson, then a clergyman at Worcester. I joined 
in their movement to raise money and buy arms for 
our oppressed friends, the Free- State pioneers in 
Kansas ; and I became secretary of the Town Com- 
mittee of Concord, of the Middlesex County Com- 
mittee, and finally, later in the year 1856, of the 
State Kansas Committee, which continued in exist- 
ence for several years and raised much money 
for the cause that finally triumphed. These duties 
gave me a great deal of travel during the va- 
cations of my Concord School, or when, as in 1857, 
I placed an assistant master in charge of its depart- 
ments. Our County Committee had for chairman 
John Nesmith, of Lowell, afterward Lieutenant- 
Governor, and among its members were C. C. Esty, 
afterward a member of Congress, and Charles 
Hammond, a distinguished teacher of American 
and Japanese students. As secretary I conducted 
the correspondence, and also spent the first half of 
my summer vacation (1856) in driving over half of 
Middlesex County in a " one-horse shay " of the 



52 Recollections of Seventy Years 

kind celebrated by Dr. Hohnes, to organize town 
committees and raise money for emigrants, arms 
and supplies. The result was that in February, 
1857, when I reported our funds to the subscribers, 
we had raised $17,383 in money and supplies from 
a population of 195,000 then hving in Middlesex, 
of which Concord gave $2,242 from a population 
of 2,251. 

In what remained of my summer vacation, I set 
forth, in August, 1856, as an agent of the Massa- 
chusetts State Kansas Committee (of which I was 
afterward secretary for some years) on a tour of 
inspection and consultation, that took me across the 
prairie States of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, and 
over the Missouri River into what was then the 
Territory of Nebraska. It was my first journey 
west of the Hudson River, and allowed me to see 
Niagara by the way, and for the first time. Five 
years later, in May, 1861, my Concord neighbor, 
Thoreau, made his first visit to Niagara, and his 
tour of the same prairie States, although he went 
but little west of the Mississippi, but turned north- 
ward, and explored a portion of Minnesota and 
Wisconsin.* My first considerable halt on this 
journey was at Chicago, then a city of but some 
80,000 people, but the seat of the National Kansas 
Committee, at w^hose office I first met Horace 
White, then secretary of the executive committee 
of the national body, and Captain Webster, after- 

* In 1906 I edited, from Thoreau's notes, what he had never had 
the health and time to transcribe, his account of this, his last con- 
siderable journey. 



National Politics— 1854.-1861 53 

ward General Grant's chief of artillery in the 
Army of the Tennessee. I next proceeded to Iowa 
City^ then the actual capital of Iowa, to see the 
Adjutant-General of the State with regard to some 
of the State muskets, which had been lent to set- 
tlers in Kansas for their protection against invaders 
from Missouri, and which, I have since heard, were 
never fully returned to the Iowa arsenal. 

Thence I went to the home of the Governor of 
Iowa, James Wilson Grimes, who lived in Burling- 
ton ; and I had an interesting interview with him in 
regard to Kansas and Iowa. He was a New Hamp- 
shire man, and had studied law with my father-in- 
law, James Walker, of Peterboro, N. H. In 
crossing the Mississippi to reach Burlington — for 
there were then no bridges over any of the great 
rivers of the West — I found on the steamer Rev. 
Edward Beecher, whom I had last seen in Boston, 
and who was going to preach at Burlington the 
next day (Sunday). I took tea with Governor 
Grimes that Sunday evening, and went with his 
family to hear Dr. Beecher afterward. The next 
day, Mr. Fitz-Henry Warren, a Massachusetts 
man, having some office in the Burlington & Mis- 
souri Railroad, then building through Iowa, gave 
me a free pass as far as the tracks were laid (to 
Mount Pleasant, a few miles west), and I started 
on my slow journey over the prairie roads to the 
Missouri River. At Mount Pleasant I met one of 
the brothers Eldridge, whose Free- State Hotel in 
Lawrence, Kansas, had been cannonaded, ruined 
and pillaged a few months earlier by a body of 



54 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Missourians, among whom was Senator Atchison, 
lately acting Vice-President of the United States. 
Mr. Eldridge, seeing that I was unarmed, and 
without an overcoat (which at that age I seldom 
wore, even in winter), lent me his Colt's revolver, 
loaded and capped, and a green and blue plaid 
shawl, under which I took some agreeable naps in 
my night-rides inside or outside the slow stage- 
coaches of that time and place. 

In these filthy coaches, with all sorts of compan- 
ions, and lodging at all kinds of stage taverns, at all 
hours of the night-arrival, I traversed the 400 miles 
between Mount Pleasant and Council Bluffs, in the 
hot August weather of that year, inspecting the 
land-route by which we were sending emigrants to 
Kansas, after the Missouri River was practically 
closed to them by the pro-slavery men of Missouri, 
who were resolved that Kansas should become a 
slave State. It was then a slave Territory, partially 
colonized by slaveholders from various parts of the 
South, bringing a few slaves with them, and ex- 
pecting to bring or see brought a great many more. 
There were many incidents of this four-days' trip, 
novel and interesting to me at the time; of which 
the most novel was an encampment of 300 Mormon 
converts from Europe, on their way to the then 
new colony of Deseret in Utah. I had some con- 
versation with these poor creatures, mostly of the 
lowest English classes, and with their shrewd and 
selfish American leaders. Very early in this singu- 
lar Mormon movement, when Joe Smith, a Ver- 
mont bricklayer, was its cliief leader, my mother's 



National Politics— 1854-1861 55 

cousin, Miss Nancy Towle, of Hampton, N. H., a 
feminine evangelist, had encountered Smith in 
Ohio, and had reproved him pubhcly for his hypoc- 
risy and wickedness — httle surmising that his hum- 
bug would develop into a powerful Territory of the 
United States, and afterward a considerable State, 
now Utah, and not wholly under JNIormon guid- 
ance. 

The pistol of T. B. Eldridge did not give me as 
good service as the shawl. I carried it, contrary to 
my general rule not to go armed, except with a 
good stick, until I had passed through all the re- 
gion supj)osed to be infested with Border Ruffians 
(the name, not undeserved, by which we knew the 
Missourian invaders of Kansas), and had never 
occasion to show even the butt of it. Finally, as I 
was driving on the homeward stretch one day, from 
Nebraska City, on the western bank of the Mis- 
souri River, to Council Bluffs, on the Iowa side, it 
occurred to me to try the effect of the weapon on 
the prairie chickens that were flying and alighting 
all about me on the wheat-growing fields of Iowa 
and the wild lands of the "Missouri Bottom." I 
stopped my driver there and got out of the light 
wagon he was driving to get a near shot at a covey 
of chickens in the roadway just behind us, where 
they had settled down after we had passed along. 
It was customary then to shoot them from a wagon 
anywhere on the open prairie, and we often had 
them for dinner or supper, amid the other uneat- 
able food. I snapped every percussion cap of my 
six barrels at the birds without starting them from 



56 Recollections of Seventy Years 

the ground, but no charge went off. The powder 
had fallen down from the nipple of the barrel, and 
the bursting cap failed to ignite the powder in the 
barrel itself. How I should have defended myself 
in an actual fight with a Missourian I hardly know 
— perhaps as General Jackson did, by thrusting his 
hand in his coat-pocket and snapping the cover of 
his snuff-box as he moved angrily toward his foe- 
man — only, unluckily, I had not my grandfather's 
snuff-box with me. 

We reached Council Bluffs in the slow stage- 
coach westward one August night as the red sun 
was setting over the Missouri Bottom and the swift 
river beyond it, where now stands the great city 
of Omaha. In 1856 a single house marked the 
spot, if I recollect aright. Council Bluffs was a 
military station of the national army, and I found 
there a good hotel, three or four miles from the 
landing of the steamboat that was to carry me 
down-stream to Nebraska City. A river boat was 
tied up there, for an evening ball, after which it 
would start in the night for St. Louis. I supped 
well at the hotel, and then, under a bright moon, in 
a huge stage-wagon, I found myself seated beside 
a handsome, black-coated Kentuckian, wearing a 
wide Byron collar and conspicuous shirt-cuffs. He 
was going to the same steamer, in company with a 
slender, fair-haired Lieutenant Foster of the army. 
He was about my own age, and very conversable. 
Soon he revealed himself as George Greathouse, 
son of a county clerk in Kentucky — the county in 
which both Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton 



National Politics— 1854-1861 57 

had found their wives, who were sisters. He knew 
the Benton family (Mr. Clay was dead), and in 
company with Randolph Benton, a son of the Sen- 
ator from Missouri, had accompanied one of the 
expeditions of Colonel Fremont across the Rockies. 
But in 1856 he was opposed to Benton, who was 
then a candidate for Governor of Missouri, and he 
gave me some details of the election campaign, 
which was going on or had just closed. He said he 
was going out on the plains with his friend Foster, 
of the army, to shoot the buffalo, then very common 
in Nebraska and Kansas. Arrived at the steamboat 
landing, we found (as he had anticipated) that a 
ball was to begin at once, and after securing our 
staterooms for down the river, he prepared for tak- 
ing part in it — having already, at the hotel, arrayed 
himself in funereal black for the festive occasion — 
the color and costume then deemed suitable for 
balls. He found a partner in a pretty girl in blue 
silk with a muslin waist, and danced with her sev- 
eral times. When I had disburdened myself of the 
heavy revolver in my stateroom, I joined him in 
the steamer's saloon, and between the dances we 
continued our conversation about IMissouri and the 
Bentons and Fremont. The latter was then a can- 
didate for the presidency, and I listened with in- 
terest to what he told me about a man I had never 
seen and whom he had known years before. Of 
course I did not disclose the capacity in which I 
was then traveling, and we avoided by mutual con- 
sent the topic of the Kansas troubles. 

In the evening after the ball I left the steamer 



58 Recollections of Seventy Tears 

at Nebraska City, bidding my Kentucky friend 
farewell, and not expecting to see him again, as he 
was to land some miles below and go out on the 
plains. I found that I had not time to enter Kan- 
sas through Nebraska, as Colonel Higginson did 
a few weeks later. I spent the Sunday in Ne- 
braska City, saw the Free- State men there, includ- 
ing red-shirted riders from Kansas, and on Tues- 
day started by land up the river to Council Bluffs 
on my return. We stopped at a small town, either 
Sidney or Tabor, in Fremont County, Iowa, for 
dinner, and waited there an hour or two until our 
horse had eaten and digested his meal. As I was 
strolling about the little tavern, after dinner, 
whom should I come upon at the stable but my 
Kentucky friend, with two or three horses, which 
he was feeding. No longer in ballroom black, he 
was dressed in the prairie costume of gray flannel 
and boots, without a coat. I spoke to him and said, 
" Why are j^ou here, and not out on the prairie 
shooting buffaloes?" He hung his head, and re- 
plied, "Down in Missouri they told me that the 
abolitionists are making trouble in Kansas, and I 
am going in with some of our men to put a stop 
to it." I urged him not to do so, saying that he 
had better keep out of harm's way, for " the dra- 
goons of Uncle Sam will keep the peace there, and 
you will not be needed." He said that he had prom- 
ised to go in, and must keep his word. He did so, 
joined an invading party, and was shot in a skir- 
mish near Franklin, in the vicinity of Lawrence. 
My friend Edmund Whitman, when I saw him 



National Politics — 185A-1861 59 

afterward in Massachusetts, where he spoke in Oc- 
tober at some of the Kansas meetings for which I 
had made arrangements — one, I remember, was at 
Carlisle, near Concord — told me that he had seen 
Greathouse lying dead on the prairie between Law- 
rence and Franklin. He remembered the incident, 
which was not uncommon in Kansas that year, from 
the singularity of the man's name (Greathouse), 
which he had never heard before. There were many 
of those who fought on the pro-slavery side, no 
doubt, as agreeable and as reckless as my Kentucky 
comrade of a single night. 

I have lately found a mass of my family letters 
of 1856-1861, which contain an account of my 
tour through Iowa and a part of Nebraska in 
August, 1856, and may be cited as contemporary 
evidence. They were written to assure my mother 
of my safety and health, but they fix certain dates 
beyond question, and connect my Kentucky friend 
Greathouse with the armed invasion from Missouri 
in September of that year. 

WESTERN JOURNEY OF AUGUST, 1856 

Nebraska City, Saturday Night, Aug. 16, 1856. 
My dear Mother: 

I write you this some 1600 miles from home, on the 
western bank of the Missouri River; yet, by the time 
you get it I may be myself in New England again. I 
reached here to-night on the steamboat Admiral, at 6 
o'clock, from Council Bluffs, — having come across Iowa 
in a stage-coach from Mt. Pleasant, near Burlington, 
Iowa, in three days and a half. Council Bluffs is a town 



60 Recollections of Seventy Years 

of 2000 people, in the extreme west of Iowa, about three 
miles from the Missouri River. I only stopped there a 
couple of hours ; for I got in from the eastward about 
7 P. M., and left for the boat about nine. I slept on 
board last night, but only for two or three hours, for 
there was a ball given on the boat, and I did not go to 
bed till 3 a. M. or after. I have slept an hour or two 
to-day, and expect to sleep my fill to-night. I have been 
riding day and night since Tuesday morning, and have 
not slept a great deal except in the coach ; still I am 
perfectly well, and not very tired. 

{Sunday Morning, Aug. 17.) After a sleep of nine 
hours, and a decent breakfast, I feel a good deal re- 
freshed, and am ready to start again on my travels. I 
shall go from here either up the river to Council Bluffs 
again, and from there back across Iowa in a stage-coach, 
— or shall wait a day or two here, and go down the river 
to St. Louis. But I shall go no farther west at all events. 
I learn here that there has been no fighting in Nebraska, 
but that General Lane's men have got into Kansas. 

This " city " has a population of 1200 or 1500, and is 
fast growing. Four years ago there were no buildings 
here except the block fort, and one or two buildings be- 
longing to it, and the place was called " Fort Kearney." 
In ten years, probably, it will be a real city of 40,000, 
with railroads running through it; although there is now 
no railroad within 250 miles. It is a very busy place, and 
there is much speculation here, as there is at Council 
Bluffs, and all along the river on this Nebraska side. 
There are half a dozen " cities " between here and Omaha 
(opposite Council Bluffs) — in some of which there are 
but three or four houses ; but land is selling there at great 
prices. This place is finely situated on the hilly western 
bank of the Missouri, and I should think is healthy. 



National Politics— 185 J^- 18 61 61 

The river is in full view from where I am, and is less 
than half a mile off. Did you ever read a description of 
the Missouri? It is the strangest river in the world. It 
is from 50 to 150 rods wide, I should think, and at pres- 
ent has an average depth of ten feet, perhaps, in the 
channel, — but the water is now quite low. The Missouri 
rises nearly 2000 miles above here, and flows for 700 miles 
more before entering the Mississippi. It is very swift, 
— running five or six miles an hour, and as muddy as it 
can be. It is yellow, for that reason, the color of coffee 
with milk in it, in consequence of the soil it washes along 
with it. Its course is constantly changing, and it is 
full of snags. The banks keep falling in, now on one side, 
now on the other, — m-aking it insecure building near the 
water's edge, even where the banks are high enough ; and 
on one side or the other (here on the Iowa side) there is 
a wide meadow (called a " bottom ") which is sometimes 
flooded, varying in width from three to 20 miles, very 
fertile. On this bottom-land no towns can be built, so 
that on the Iowa side, from here to Council Bluffs, there 
can be no towns on the river, unless fortified by embank- 
ments, levees, etc. 

There is great beauty in the banks of the river, and 
the stream itself; especially when seen by moonlight, as 
I first saw it, sweeping down so swiftly with its wide 
waters, it is a majestic sight. The country all around 
is now green and fertile, and must soon become thickly 
settled. The people here expect a railroad through from 
Burlington in course of five years, — I saw it building as 
I came through, — which will greatly benefit this city and 
will go on to make part of the great Pacific Railroad. 
I think it will be built through to here in two years, and 
I shall urge this on all Eastern capitalists as a most im- 
portant object. 



62 Recollections of Seventy Years 

All through Iowa I rode amid beautiful rolling prairies, 
and saw a great deal of wood, — more than I expected. 
Governor J. W. Grimes, of Iowa, with whom I took tea 
at Burlington last Sunday evening, the 10th, told me 
there will always be wood enough in his State; that there 
is more there now than 25 years ago. The land is not 
so level as I thought, — not so level as Hampton and 
many parts of Hampton Falls, — and we crossed some 
hills steeper and longer than any about home. Iowa is 
the finest State I have yet seen for land — you never saw 
such Indian corn as they raise there. I saw a stalk on 
Friday which must have been 15 feet high, — perhaps 
16 ; I could just reach the topmost ear on it without 
standing tiptoe, which means eight feet from the ground. 
They call our humble New England cornfields " bum- 
blebee corn " ; for they say a bee can sit down at his 
ease and gather honey from its topmost flowers. I saw 
whole fields in the Missouri bottom where it was ten, 
twelve and fourteen feet high. Wheat had been cut; 
but I saw its immense stacks all along the road, for there 
are few bams in Iowa, except in a few of the southeast 
counties. 

As I rode from Mount Pleasant to Council Bluffs I 
saw the sun rise from the eastern prairies and set behind 
the western ones ; and finally I saw him set across the 
Missouri, and beyond the western plains and woods, where 
they hunt the bufFalo. We passed many emigrant wagons, 
— the " prairie schooner," — moving on by day and sta- 
tionary at night, with a little fire beside them, where men 
and women were cooking their supper, as I have seen the 
Barrington gypsies doing at Hampton Falls. On Friday 
morning, the 15th, we came to a great camp of Mormons 
in Cass County, — some 300 women and children on their 
way to Utah, on foot or in ox-teams. They were from 



National Politics— 1854-1861 63 

England mostly, — poor, ignorant, and grossly deluded. 
I talked with several of them, and bought from their 
American leader a tract on " The Plurality of Wives." 
Large bodies of Mormons are before and behind these 
people ; all moving to Utah, and most of them from Eu- 
rope. One day earlier, as we were walking up a long 
hill, we killed a rattlesnake, no larger than our brown 
adders,— it was killed with the foot by one of us, without 
trouble. In the woodlands, — here called " timber," — 
they grow larger ; but on the prairie are always small. 
I wrote to Sarah from the town of Winterset, the other 
day, and before that to Charles from Mt. Pleasant; but 
have heard nothing from New England since I left there, 
except through the New York newspapers for a few days ; 
for I travel faster than the mails, usually. The latest 
paper I saw was the New York Herald at Burlington. 
Here they have no papers later than the St. Louis Re- 
publican and Democrat of the 6th, — but a boat is now 
looked for with two days' later dates. I shall look for 
letters at Mt. Pleasant or Chicago. I expect to be in 
Springfield by the 27th or 28th, and in Concord by the 
last of August or 1st of September. You will get this, 
I think, about the 30th. I have been well all the time, 
and have much enjoyed the trip. I have also done much 
business, and got many facts together. From Mt. Pleas- 
ant I have carried a revolver, lent me by Colonel T. B. 
Eldridge, — but in my valise; and I shall not wear it 
unless I go down the Missouri to St. Louis. This is a 
peaceful town, and I have seen no quarrels yet, anywhere. 
I am always 

Your affectionate son, 

Frank B. Sanboen. 



64 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Des Moines City, or Fort Des Moines, Aug, 22, 1856. 

I got here at noon to-day, Friday, on my way home. 
I left Nebraska City on Tuesday morning, the 19th, 
waited a day at Sidney, just the Iowa side of the river, 
— got to Council Bluffs by wagon at 10 p. M. on Wed- 
nesday,— left there yesterday at one o'clock in the morn- 
ing, shall leave here at 3:30 a. m. to-morrow, Saturday. 
I expect to get to Mt. Pleasant on Sunday, the 24th, and 
to reach Chicago Tuesday morning, traveling all night. 
I shall then reach Springfield Thursday afternoon, the 
28th. I am not very tired, and perfectly well. 

Since I wrote, on the 17th, I have heard important news, 
some of which you and Charles may hear before you get 
this, — but some of it you will not hear. 

I saw three of Martin Stowell's Worcester company of 
emigrants on the 18th at Nebraska City; they told me of 
the safe arrival of all Lane's men in Kansas. They 
founded three towns in Kansas as they went in, — one 
five miles from the Nebraska line, called Plymouth, one 
15 miles farther south, — Lexington, — and one as much 
farther, — Concord. Stowell's men are at Lexington, where 
they have some 70 settlers. It is a fine locality ; the men 
are well ; they met no resistance, and are in good spirits. 
An account of them has been sent to the New York 
Tribune; another I send to the Boston Telegraph; so 
you will soon see about this in the newspapers. The suc- 
cess of the party was perfect. But something has since 
happened of which you have probably heard an exagger- 
ated account. 

As a portion of Lane's men (less than 100), were pass- 
ing from Topeka to Lawrence on August 15, — they had 
reached Topeka on the 11th, — they were fired on from 
a block-house near Lecompton by pro-slavery men. A 
fight ensued. Lane himself, who was behind, came up, 



National Politics— 18S 4-18 61 65 

and as there was no other way of routing the pro-slavery 
men, the house was burned. None were killed, but three 
wounded on each side. These are the facts, as I had 
them from Lane's messenger, through another man, — 
and I also saw a letter from Lane. But in Missouri they 
report that Lecompton has been taken by Lane, and 
burned, the United States troops captured, and the pris- 
oners released. Consequently, the Border Ruffians are 
sending in armed men to attack our men, and, if possible, 
to close up the route through Nebraska against emigrants. 
This they will fail to do ; but there will no doubt be more 
serious fighting. Lane's men have acted so wisely and 
posted themselves so well, that I don't believe they can 
be driven out of their towns. I longed to go down into 
Kansas, but felt that I ought not. I spent two days at 
Nebraska City, because I could not get away. I do not 
think I shall be delayed any more; and you may con- 
fidently believe me at Springfield, when you get this let- 
ter on Friday, as you probably will, 

[I did, in fact, carry the letter with me to Albany, N. 
Y., and there mailed it to Hampton Falls, N. H., after 
midnight, on the 28th, — adding in a postscript, " I shall 
be in Springfield at eleven this morning." This was 
Thursday and it did reach its destination on Friday the 
29th.] This is a town of 3000 to 4000 people, on 
the Des INIoines River. It is to be the capital of the 
State, and is a pleasant town. I shall have had enough 
of traveling before I get home, and shall be glad to get 
back to New England again. 

Yours affectionately, 

Feank B. Sanborn." 

The attack and success of August 15 are cor- 
rectly described in this letter. But when Atchison, 



66 Recollections of Seventy Years 

in Missouri, August 17, was relating it, in order to 
incite his friends to invade Kansas again, as they 
did, he thus reported it: 

" August 15, Brown, with 400 abolitionists, mostly 
Lane's men, mounted and armed, attacked Treadwell's 
Settlement in Douglas County, numbering about 30 men. 
They planted the old cannon ' Sacramento ' towards the 
colony, and surrounded them." 

John Brown, Jr., one of the Lecompton pris- 
oners, wrote from the prison camp to his father 
and brother Jason a more exact account, saying : 

" I was in hearing of the attack on Colonel Titus this 
morning. A messenger has just come in, stating that 
Titus and several others were taken prisoners ; Titus 
wounded. I saw the fire of Titus's house. ... I 
should think that 200 shots have been fired within the past 
half-hour, within a mile of our camp. Have just learned 
that some 80 of our Free State men have pitched in to a 
pro-slavery camp this side of Lecompton, which was com- 
manded by a notorious pro-slavery scoundrel named Titus, 
— one of the Buford party from Alabama. A dense vol- 
ume of smoke is now rising in the vicinity of his house. 
The firing has ceased." 

It was by the appeal of Atchison and Stringfel 
low on August 17, that my companion, the Ken- 
tuckian, Greathouse, was induced to join the in- 
vading force which Governor Geary sent back to 
Missouri about the middle of September, a month 
after this capture of Titus and his block-house. 
I parted from Greathouse at Nebraska City on 



National Politics— 1854-1861 67 

the 16th of August; he went farther down the 
river and there met the news of the capture of Ti- 
tus, and the other victories of the Free- State men. 
I met him the second time at Tabor, or near there, 
on the 20th, with his horses, and he no doubt joined 
the army of invasion a few days later. At this time 
Frederick and Jason Brown were the only sons of 
Captain Brown who were with him in Kansas ; for 
Owen and his brother-in-law, Henry Thompson, 
were in Tabor, wounded, and the younger sons, 
Salmon and Oliver, were on their way back to 
North Elba, where I saw Salmon the next summer. 
Writing on August 19th, from his prison camp, 
John Brown, Jr., said: 

" Father returned to Kansas with the overland emi- 
grants, leaving in Nebraska Henry Thompson, Owen, Sal- 
mon, Frederick and Oliver, much improved in health. 
He was in the fight at Franklin, and also aided in routing 
the gang on Washington Creek, as well as in the capture 
of Titus and his crew. . . . He is an omnipresent 
dread to the ruffians. I see by the Missouri papers that 
they regard him as the most terrible foe they have to 
encounter." 

Writing from Tabor, August 27, Owen Brown 
said: 

" We hear lately that about 3000 Missourians have 
crossed at St. Joe and other places, and have gone armed 
into the Territory ; that Governor Woodson has sent 400 
mounted men on to the frontier [of Nebraska] to inter- 
cept our volunteers, and prevent them from carrying in 
provisions and ammunition, which are much needed now 



68 Recollections of Seventy Years 

in Kansas. . . . Nor have I heard from Henry, Sal- 
mon, William (Thompson) and Oliver, since they left this 
place (Tabor) to go home (to North Elba)." 



JNIy own errand in this journey was to inspect 
the emigrant route through Iowa, in order that it 
might be kept open for men, arms and ammunition 
during the autumn of 1856; and I was only to 
enter Kansas, if there was time for it, or urgent 
necessity. There was no time, for my school was 
to open early in September, and the news I got at 
Nebraska City was that our friends were success- 
ful. I believe I met Colonel Higginson at Wor- 
cester, August 29, before he went out to Kansas, 
to lead in a party of emigrants from Nebraska 
City early in September, — an adventure which he 
described at the time in letters to the New York 
Tribune, and more recently, with some inaccuracies, 
in his " Cheerful Yesterdays." 

During a recent visit to me in Concord, Mr. W. 
E. Connelley, the best informed historian of Kan- 
sas and western Missouri, — the region in which 
he has lived for the past 30 years, — has informed 
me of a conversation lately held with the octoge- 
narian, P. P. Elder (an early settler in Kansas 
from JNIaine), at one time Lieutenant-Governor, 
who informed him that in the early autumn of 
1856 there was a definite agreement between 
Brown, Lane and Charles Robinson, then nominal 
Governor of the Territory, and Geary, at Law- 
rence, that they should all leave Kansas, and give 
Geary, the newly arrived Federal Goveirnor, a 



National Politics— 185^-1861 69 

free hand in establishing peace between the war- 
ring parties. His statement on this point was 
questioned by Mr. Oswald Villard, who is prepar- 
ing a new biography of Brown; but it agrees with 
the recorded facts. All these Free- State leaders 
did leave Kansas in September or early October, 
1856; and in an address to the Kansas Historical 
Society, January 18, 1881, Robinson said; 

" On the 14th of September the Missouri army, 2800 
strong, arrived at Lawrence, threatening its destruction. 
. As these men were marching into the Territory, 
I met Governor Geary at Lawrence, and had a full and 
frank discussion of the situation. . . . John Brown 
was present [in Lawrence]. I saw him constantly, as 
neither of us had any connection with any company, and 
could go as we pleased. . . . Governor Geary as- 
sured me that he . . . would guarantee the safety 
of the town. . . . When the reconnoitering party 
came in sight of Lawrence, I dispatched a messenger and 
reminded the Governor of his pledge and the situation. 
He at once sent the whole force of United States troops 
with him to Lawrence, where they arrived in the night 
and put an end to all anxiety. . . . Governor Geary 
called to his aid several companies of hona fide residents 
of the Territory, one of them commanded by Captain 
Samuel Walker, and the war of extermination came to 
an end. Geary was satisfied that the Free-State men 
were largely in the majority, and was desirous that the 
majority should rule; ... he sent to the Governor 
under the Topeka Constitution and desired an interview 
at his office, ... in the attic of the log cabin on 
the bank of the river at Lecorapton. At that interview 
Governor Geary was ready to favor an admission under 



70 Recollections of Seventy Years 

the Topeka Constitution, and was ready to use his in- 
fluence with the President and his party in Congress. It 
was thought, if there could be a vacancy in the position 
of Governor, that he or some other Democrat might be 
elected to fill it. . . . Accordingly, the Topeka Gov- 
ernor resigned, and went to Washington, for the pur- 
pose of procuring admission into the Union." * 

Robinson is careful not to give dates after Sep- 
tember 16, when the Missouri army, dispersed by 
Geary, began their retreat. But on September 
22 Lane, from western Iowa, going eastward to 
make speeches for Fremont, sent a letter to his 
former fellow-soldier of the Mexican War, Doni- 
phan, and did not return to Kansas for weeks and 
months. About the middle of October, Robinson 
was in Boston, making a speech, which I heard, 
and on the 22d of October he made a speech for 
Fremont in New York City. By December 1 
Robinson was back in Kansas, to start the vanished 
town of Quindaro, and it was not until December 
25, 1856, that he sent a letter to his Lieutenant- 
Governor, Roberts, resigning his nominal govern- 
orship. This was first published in the New York 
Tribune of January 14, 1857. 

During all the time from October 9 till the 
summer of 1857, John Brown was out of Kansas, 
and it is CA^ery way probable that he tacitly assented 
to the arrangement with Geary, who had favored 
his escape from arrest. Lane, who was not yet at 
sharp variance with Robinson, may have given 

*Proceeclings of the Kansas Historical Society, Vols. 1 and 2. 



National Politics— 1854-1861 71 

Geary assurance of his absence, and was soon in 
Washington, laboring for the admission of Kansas 
as a State, under the Topeka Constitution. But the 
election of Buchanan as President, and the com- 
ing Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, 
intended to make negro slavery national and irre- 
movable, cut short the intrigue, to which Geary 
may have been a party, and on the 4th of March, 
1857, he resigned. I met him in Philadelphia soon 
after, loud in his denunciations of Buchanan and 
his policy. 

All this time, from June to September, 1856, 
bodies of immigrants and individuals had been 
making their way into the Territory — some, but by 
no means all, through the agency of the Emigrant 
Aid Company, of Boston. This company had been 
very active in aiding immigrants and sending rifles 
during 1855 and 1856, but had suffered much by 
loss of its property from the Missouri raids. It 
left the work, in the later months of 1856 and the 
whole year 1857, largely to the National Kansas 
Committee and the Massachusetts State Commit- 
tee, and to Gerrit Smith, who gave a thousand dol- 
lars a month during the active period of hostihties 
in 1856, and for some months longer. The State 
conmiittee, of which I became secretary, used the 
funds of a Faneuil Hall committee, after the thor- 
ough organization of the State committee by the 
election of George L. Stearns as its chairman; hav- 
ing previously had its funds used in a masterly way 
by Dr. Howe, during the months of June and July. 
From about the first of August, 1856, Mr. Stearns 



72 Recollections of Seventy Years 

and his State committee became the working center 
of aid to the Free-State men of Kansas, and were 
heartily seconded by the Middlesex County Com- 
mittee, of which I had been secretary since early 
in June; by the Worcester County Committee, of 
which Wentworth Higginson was an active mem- 
ber, and by the Hampden County Committee, of 
which my brother-in-law, George Walker, was 
chairman. 

From Council Bluffs, on my stage-coach return 
to Burlington, I took a new route part of the way, 
and passed through Des Moines, which had been 
designated as the capital of Iowa, and where the 
State House was building. I had been sleeping 
sweetly on the top of the coach, among the light 
luggage, wrapped in Eldridge's shawl from the 
heavy dews and the prairie breeze, always blowing, 
when I awoke to find our vehicle trundling down 
into the Des Moines valley, with the building-stone 
for the new Capitol lying all about on the roadsides. 
I have not been there since, in the fifty-two years 
that intervene ; but it is now a city of 80,000 people, 
rich in manufactures ; and in the State House which 
I saw building, or in a more magnificent State Li- 
brary since built, is a special " Alcott Room," de- 
voted to the books, manuscripts, etc., of the Alcott 
family, in honor of my contemporary, Louisa Al- 
cott, who in that very year was watching the sick- 
bed of her mother and sister " Beth," in Walpole, 
N. H. — far enough from the fame which her fam- 
ily histories of " Little Women " were to bring her 
a dozen years later. 



National Politics— 1854-1861 73 

I returned to Concord without further adven- 
ture, and took up my school-work; but along with 
it the continued business of raising money and 
holding meetings in aid of free Kansas. In De- 
cember, 1856, putting my school in charge of the 
late Francis Abbot, then a student at Harvard Col- 
lege, for a few months, I took charge myself of 
the State Kansas Committee's office in Niles' 
Building, School Street, Boston— being secretary 
and general agent of the committee, of which my 
friend G. L. Stearns was chairman, and Dr. Howe, 
Dr. Samuel Cabot, Thomas Bussell of Plymouth, 
afterward judge and railroad commissioner, and 
Minister to Venezuela, were active members, with 
Patrick Jackson, second of the name, and uncle of 
my intimate college friend, Charles Russell Lowell, 
as the treasurer. Out of this committee-work 
soon grew my intimacy with John Brown, of Kan- 
sas and Virginia. 

Circumstances have made me, as testimony is 
measured in our courts of law, a competent and 
fairly credible witness as to the struggle to make 
Kansas a free State, and most of the men who took 
part in that struggle. I knew quite thoroughly, I 
think, the early history of Kansas, both as unor- 
ganized and disorganized Territory and as a State 
in the Union. I became interested in that sparsely 
settled Territory, not as a landholder or settler, but 
as a friend of free institutions, early in 1855, when 
I was of full age and able to understand facts and 
draw inferences — so far as a course of instruction 
at Harvard College could enable me. I kept up 



74 Recollections of Seventy Years 

my acquaintance with events and persons there 
through the whole disturbed period, from 1855 to 
1862, by correspondence, travel, and careful read- 
ing of the conflicting evidence furnished by news- 
papers, Presidents' messages, and printed books 
and speeches. I never allowed my opinions to be 
biased by buying lands there, or running for office. 
I expended a year's time, first and last, and what 
was for me a good deal of money, to make Kansas 
a free State, and have three times visited it and 
traveled through portions of it, to see what had 
been the upshot of our early efforts. I have never 
been hired, as several of the would-be historians 
and chroniclers of Kansas were, to write up any 
man's merits or write down any man's faults. I 
am therefore puzzled sometimes to know why I 
should be attacked and traduced by men whose 
cause I espoused when the whole force of the na- 
tional government was against them, and with 
whom I had no quarrel until they picked one them- 
selves with me. I am a member of the Kansas His- 
torical Society, which has collected the largest mass 
in the world of the documents illustrating the early 
history of the State; have spent days examining 
this collection, and been in friendly correspondence 
with its secretaries from the beginning. 

I can therefore speak from actual knowledge 
with regard to most of the persons active in the 
settlement of the disputed questions in Kansas, and, 
I think, have always been able to judge with rea- 
sonable impartiality of their conduct and motives. 
I did not know the weak but good-natured Presi- 



National Politics— 1854-1861 75 

dent, Franklin Pierce, during his term of office, 
but I made his acquaintance later, and think I un- 
derstand the lamentable inconsistencies in his char- 
acter. I met Governor Geary on his return from his 
useful but thankless task of undoing the mischief 
occasioned by the misconduct of President Pierce, 
under the stronger will of Jefferson Davis, his Sec- 
retary of War; and I understood what qualities 
had aided and what hindered his work in Kansas. I 
spent an afternoon with A. H. Reeder, the first 
Territorial Governor of Kansas, at his home in 
Easton, Pa., and could measure his qualities, such 
as they were; and I met, first and last, nearly all 
the active persons who aided in the desired result. 
They had various gifts, and by no means all the 
same spirit; but among them all none was so truly 
remarkable as John Brown. Other men might 
have been spared; he was indispensable. We did 
not all see this at the time; some persons dispute it 
now; but the fact remains, and will only become 
more evident as time passes, and gradually sets the 
deeds of all men who are not entirely forgotten in 
their proper perspective. 

I was sitting in my small office in School Street 
early in January, 1857, when Brown entered, and 
handed me a letter of introduction from my brother 
Walker of Springfield. He had known Brown as 
a neighbor and borrower of bank loans while carry- 
ing on a large business in Springfield as a wool- 
dealer; indeed, George Walker was, I believe, the 
legal counsel of one of the banks which Brown 
used in his loans and payments. Hardly any two 



76 Recollections of Seventy Years 

men were more unlike by nature and training, ex- 
cept that both had honest and kindly hearts. 
George was a scholarly and carefully trained man, 
who had cultivated the graces and amenities of life 
and moved in a circle of affectionate politeness, at 
first in New Hampshire, where he was born in 
.1824, and afterward at Boston and Springfield, 
where he married the only daughter of a wealthy 
family, and lived in ease and moderate luxury, sur- 
rounded by his books, his children, his friends and 
his guests. He had political opinions, but not 
strong ones; had inherited from his father and his 
great-uncle. Judge Smith, of New Hampshire, 
Webster's friend, the old-fashioned sentiments of 
the Federalists and their grandchildren, the Whigs. 
He was humane, sensible, considerate; detested 
negro slavery, but saw no way to rid the nation of 
it; studied EfUglish history, literature and finance, 
and might well have been a professor of law or po- 
litical economy at Dartmouth, Yale, or Harvard, 
all colleges which he knew as a student there. 

John Brown, though born in New England, and 
strongly marked with the New England serious- 
ness of mood, had spent most of his half -century 
in new and wild regions, intimate with nature, and 
directing other men rather than guided or trained 
by them. He was profound in his thinking, and 
had formed his opinions rather by observation than 
by reading, though well versed in a few books, chief 
among which was the Bible. He was, in truth, a 
Calvinistic Puritan, born a century or two after 
the fashion had changed; but as ready as those of 




f^. 







JOHN BROWN, 1857 
Fro77i a Boston Photograph 



National Politics— 1854-1861 77 

Bradford's or Cromwell's time had been to engage 
in any work of the Lord to which he felt himself 
called. He saw with unusual clearness the mis- 
chievous relation to republican institutions of negro 
slavery, and made up his fixed mind that it must be 
abolished ; not merely, or even mostly, for the relief 
of the slaves, but for the restoration of the Re- 
public to its original ideal — freedom under law for 
all, white, black, yellow or red. He regarded the 
Indian and the negro simply as men ; and though he 
did not expect of them what he expected of his own 
race and faith, he believed that all their rights 
should be respected. He had seen the country com- 
ing more and more into the belief that slavery was 
a permanent institution — not as Jefferson and 
Washington had looked on it, something that must 
gradually yield to the spirit of freedom embodied 
in the American ideal. He had formed various 
plans for attacking slavery where it was apparently 
strongest, but really weakest — in the midst of the 
large plantations. The effort to give the evil insti- 
tution renewed vitality by annexing new territory 
for colonization by slaveholders, alarmed him in 
the Mexican War, and aroused him to decisive ac- 
tion when Kansas was opened by the slave-masters, 
then in control of the national government, to the 
blighting introduction and spread of negro slavery. 
He saw the proper remedy for this mischief — the 
colonization of the Territory by free laborers — as 
soon as any man had seen it ; and his four sons were 
among the early settlers in Kansas. He had joined 
them there, in October, 1855, with arms and sup- 



78 Recollections of Seventy Years 

plies, intended for the defense of them and of other 
pioneers against the invaders from the South. 

It so happened that the whole North had been 
shocked by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
of 1820, under pressure from the President and his 
cabinet; and the Whig party was startled in a 
greater degree than its Democratic or Native Amer- 
ican opponents. Mr. Walker had been an active 
Whig, and was overtaken, along with his party in 
Massachusetts, by the " Know-Nothing " flood in 
1854, after the marriage and death of his sister, 
which brought me into close relations with him. 
From that time he was ready, like so many others 
of the young Whigs, to unite with any citizens re- 
solved against the further extension of slavery. He 
had joined the newly formed Republican party in 
1856, and was enthusiastic for the election of Fre- 
mont, as I was. He knew Brown's sterling integ- 
rity of old, and had followed his career in Kansas 
more closely than I had. Hence his readiness to 
promote Brown's wishes in the winter of 1856-57; 
to forward which the Kansas fighter had come to 
Boston. And with my introduction to Brown that 
winter day, there began an episode in my life which 
had unexpected and most irpportant results. 



CHAPTER III 

Kansas and Virginia 

MUCH of my youthful life had been put 
behind me at the beginning of this 
friendship with John Brown, and it 
had been marked by singular and 
providential incidents; so that I was prepared for 
the faith which I soon learned that Brown enter- 
tained in a Power which directs or leads men be- 
yond their own expectations, hopes or wishes. Like 
others who have reached seven-and-seventy years 
(or much fewer than that), I have often noticed in 
looking back how one marked event in early life 
leads to another marked event, and that to a third, 
and so on; as if by a chain of sequences arranged 
beforehand upon a scheme of life. It is this, no 
doubt, which has led so many men to view their ca- 
reers as something foreordained — a map shown of 
their destinies, which pointed out the way they were 
to go, not compelling them to a given course, but in- 
dicating the line of least resistance. It was through 
the fact that my fathers had been parishioners of 
Parson Abbot, and the acquaintance had been kept 
up between the families, that I became the lover 
of Ariana Walker. It was she who determined my 
college education ; it was our mutual interest for the 
oppressed that made me active in the cause of social 

79 



80 Recollections of Seventy Years 

and political freedom; and it was her brother 
George, a year or two after her death, who sent 
John Brown of Kansas to me with a letter of 
introduction, late in the year 1856. Six years later 
it was this same brother-in-law, then in the State 
government of Massachusetts (when the John 
Brown episode had been closed by the emancipation 
proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, and the victory 
at Gettysburg), who suggested to me an appoint- 
ment on the newly created Board of State Char- 
ities, in 1863, which has largely shaped the course 
of my public life for nearly half a century. From 
another point of view, my college career brought 
me into the circle of the Concord Transcendental- 
ists, and determined that small focus of plain living 
and high thinking as my place of abode for more 
than half a century — save for a few years that I 
resided near my brother-in-law in Springfield. 
And it was the acquaintance formed with his circle 
at Springfield, from 1853 to 1865, which led to my 
selection by his intimate friend, Samuel Bowles, 
as one of the editors of the Sprmgfield Repuhlican, 
— then and since one of the most influential jour- 
nals in the United States; whose staff I joined in 
1856, as a correspondent, and of which I became 
a resident editor in 1868, and until 1872. 

I cannot believe, therefore, that our human 
lives are subject to blind chance, or fortuitously 
directed by accident. Too many events in my own 
career and those of my associates, have shown me 
a more intelligent directing power, aside from the 
individual human will ; what it is, in direct activity, 



Kansas and Virginia 81 

I have not too curiously inquired. But I have 
followed its intimations when they were clearly 
revealed, and thus have found my little bark steered 
by a hand wiser than my own. 

This faith is one aspect of that philosophy to 
which mere accident may have given, in America, 
the name of " Transcendental," and of which my 
long-time friends, Alcott and Emerson, were the 
best representatives — unless it might be some 
simple-hearted Quakeress, illumined by the Inner 
Light. John Brown, that descendant of May- 
flower Pilgrims, held this faith also, and it led 
him into those dark, heroic ways whose issue was 
the forcible destruction of negro slavery, and his 
own immortality of fame, as one of the two grand 
martyrs of that cause — Abraham Lincoln being 
the other. I have met many men and women of 
eminent character, and of various genius and tal- 
ents, among whom Brown stands by himself — an 
occasion for dispute and blame as well as for praise 
and song. I belong now to a small and fast-dwin- 
dling band of men and women who, fifty, sixty and 
seventy years ago resolved that other persons ought 
to be as free as ourselves. Many of this band 
made sacrifices for the cause of freedom — the free- 
dom of others, not their own. Some sacrificed their 
fortunes and their lives. One man, rising above the 
rest by a whole head, gave his hfe, his small fortune, 
his children, his reputation — all that was naturally 
dear to him — under conditions which have kept him 
in memory, while other victims are forgotten or 
but dimly remembered. John Brown fastened the 



82 Recollections of Seventy Years 

gaze of the whole world upon his acts and his 
fate; the speeding years have not lessened the in- 
terest of mankind in his life and death; and each 
succeeding generation inquires what sort of man he 
truly was. The time is coming — and has already 
arrived in some regions — when Brown will be re- 
garded as a mythical personage, incarnating some 
truth or some desire dear to the human race, but 
not a flesh-and-blood man at all. His career had 
elements of romance and improbability, such as 
make us doubt the actual existence of legendary 
heroes, like Hercules, Samson, Arthur, Roland and 
the Spanish Cid. But he was a very real and ac- 
tual person — only a peculiar and remarkable one, 
hke Joan of Arc — one of those who appear from 
time to time, to verify the saying, " Man alone 
can perform the impossible." What more impos- 
sible than that a village-girl of France should lead 
the king's armies to victory? — unless it were that 
a sheep-farmer and wool-merchant of Ohio should 
foreshow and rehearse the forcible emancipation of 
four millions of American slaves. 

Brown knew the inward cancer that was destroy- 
ing our Republic; he pointed to the knife and the 
cautery that must extirpate it; he even had the 
force and nerve to make the first incision. Lord 
Rosebery, speaking of certain national junctures, 
says, " What is then wanted is not treasures, nor 
fleets, nor legions, but a man — the man of the mo- 
ment, the man of destiny. In such there is (besides 
their talents) their spirit, their character — that 
magnetic fluid which enables them to influence vast 



Kansas and Virginia 83 

bodies of their fellow-men; and makes them a 
binding and stimulating power outside the circle 
of their own fascination." This character Brown 
had; it grew out of his courage, his self-sacrifice 
and his implicit faith in God. These are traits that 
cannot long be simulated, nor is it easy to disguise 
self-seeking in a mask of generosity. The less 
courage, the more self-love men have, the more 
quick are they to recognize their opposites. 

It has been asked if from the first the greatness 
of Brown's nature and mission was perceived. Of 
course they were not seen by all; but there is a di- 
vining quality in youth and in genius which lets 
them behold in simple men more than the callous 
veteran may discern. From my first meeting with 
him, as from his first interviews with Thoreau and 
Emerson, to whom I introduced Brown, it was clear 
to them as to me that he was no common man ; his 
face, his walk, his whole bearing proclaimed it. 
Like Cromwell, whom in certain rare qualities he 
much resembled, he had " cleared his mind of 
cant " ; the hollow formulas of scholars, priests and 
politicians had little force with Brown. He had a 
purpose, knew what it was, and meant to achieve 
it. Who may say that he did not '( The emancipa- 
tion of our slaves could not be the work of any 
one man, or of a million men; it was finally wrought 
by Lincoln with a stroke of his pen; but even then 
it cost thousands of lives and the patient work of 
years to confirm what Lincoln had written. John 
Brown convinced the leaders of opinion on both 
sides that slavery must die or the nation could not 



84 Recollections of Seventy Years 

live; and that was the first long step towards our 
emancipation. 

I first met Brown, a little more than fifty years 
ago, when he was not yet 57 years old; my acquaint- 
ance with him continued hardly three years; yet 
I seem to have known him better, and to have seen 
him oftener than those who have journeyed beside 
me in life's path for sixty years. My actual inter- 
course with him hardly exceeded a month; my cor- 
respondence was some two and a half years ( from 
February, 1857, to September, 1859), and that in- 
frequent; yet the momentous events in which he 
had a share give to that brief intercourse the seem- 
ing duration of a lifetime. Nay, Thoreau was 
literally no less than figuratively right, when he 
ascribed to Brown a practical immortality. " Of 
all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, 
it seems to me that John Brown is the only one who 
has not died. I meet him at every turn. He is 
more alive than ever he was." 

He came to me, as mentioned, with a note of in- 
troduction from George Walker — both of us being 
Kansas committee-men, working to maintain the 
freedom of that Territory, — and Brown had been 
one of the fighting men there in the summer of 
1856, just before. His theory required fighting in 
Kansas; it was the only sure way to keep that re- 
gion free from the curse of slavery. His mission 
now was to levy war on it, and for that to raise 
and equip a company of a hundred well- 
armed men who should resist aggression in Kan- 
sas, or occasionally carry the war into JNIissouri. 



Kansas and Virginia 85 

Behind that purpose, but not yet disclosed, was 
his intention to use the men thus put into the 
field for incursions into Virginia or other slave 
States. Our State Kansas Committee, of which 
I was secretary, had a stock of arms that Brown 
wished to use for this company, and these we voted 
to him. We did this in recognition of his pasrt; 
services in Kansas, which nobody of our way of 
thinking then disputed. His whole conduct in the 
Territory was not fully known to us; but it was 
fairly well understood in Kansas. He had reached 
Kansas in October, 1855, traveling slowly with his 
son-in-law, Henry Thompson, of North Elba, N. 
Y., through Illinois, Iowa and slave-holding Mis- 
souri. But his first introduction to the armed de- 
fenders of freedom at Lawrence in December, was 
thus described by G. W. Brown, in his Herald of 
Freedom, December 15, 1855: 

" About noon [on Friday, December 7] Mr. John 
Brown, an aged gentleman from Essex County, N. Y.j 
who has been a resident of the Territory for several 
months, arrived with four of his sons — leaving several 
others at home sick — bringing a quantity of arms with 
him, which were placed in his hands by eastern friends 
for the defense of the cause of freedom. Having more 
than he could well use to advantage, a portion of them 
were placed in the hands of those who were more desti- 
tute. A company was organized and the command given 
to Mr. B. for the zeal he had exhibited in the cause of 
freedom both before and since his arrival in the Terri- 
tory." 

This was in the midst of the first siege of Law- 



86 Recollections of Seventy Years 

rence, then the leading Free State town in Kansas, 
in the so-called " Wakarusa War." There was 
more threatening than fighting; but in it Brown 
received his title of captain, given him as comman- 
der of the company in which his sons served. His 
own account of the affair, in a letter to his family 
in the Adirondac forest, written Sunday, Decem- 
ber 16, from his brother-in-law's log cabin, near 
Osawatomie, is as follows, abbreviated: 

" These reports [of murder and invasion from Mis- 
souri] appeared to be well authenticated, and I left this 
for the place where the boys are settled, at evening, in- 
tending to go to Lawrence to learn the facts the next 
day. John [his son] was, however, started on horseback; 
but before he had gone many rods, word came that our 
help was immediately wanted. We then set about pro- 
viding a little corn-bread and meat, blankets, and cook- 
ing utensils, running bullets and loading our guns, pistols, 
etc. The five set off in the afternoon, and after a short 
rest in the night (which was quite dark), continued our 
march until after daylight next morning, when we got 
our breakfast, started again, and reached Lawrence in 
the forenoon, all of us more or less lamed by our tramp. 
On reaching the place we found that negotiations had 
commenced between Governor Shannon and the principal 
leaders of the Free-State men, they having a force of 
some five hundred men at that time. These were busy, 
night and day, fortifying the town with embankments 
and circular earthworks, up to the time of the treaty 
with the Governor, as an attack was constantly looked 
for, notwithstanding the negotiations then pending. 
This state of things continued from Friday until Sunday 
evening. 



Kansas and Virginia 87 

" After frequently calling on the leaders of the Free- 
State men to come and have an interview with him, by 
Governor Shannon, and after as often getting for an 
answer that if he had any business to transact with any 
one in Lawrence, to come and attend to it, he signified 
his wish to come into the town, and an escort was sent 
to the invaders' camp to conduct him in. When there, 
the leading Free-State men, finding out his weakness, 
frailty, and consciousness of the awkward circumstances 
into which he had really got himself, took advantage of 
his cowardice and folly, and by means of that and the 
free use of whiskey and some trickery succeeded in getting 
a written arrangement with him much to their own liking. 
He stipulated with them to order the pro-slavery men of 
Kansas home, and to proclaim to the Missouri invaders 
that they must quit the Territory without delay, and also 
to give up General Pomeroy (a prisoner in their camp) — 
which was all done; he also recognizing the volunteers as 
the militia of Kansas, and empowering their oflicers to 
call them out whenever in their discretion the safety of 
Lawrence or other portions of the Territory might re- 
quire it to be done. 

" One little circumstance, connected with our own num- 
ber, showing a little of the true character of these in- 
vaders: On our way, about three miles from Lawrence, 
we had to pass a bridge (with our arms and ammunition) 
of which the invaders held possession ; but as the five of 
us had each a gun, with two large revolvers in a belt 
exposed to view, with a third in his pocket, and as we 
moved directly on to the bridge without making any halt, 
they, for some reason, suffered us to pass without inter- 
ruption, notwithstanding there were some fifteen to 
twenty-five (as variously reported) stationed in a log- 



88 Recollections of Seventy Years 

house at one end of the bridge. We could not count 
them. A boy on our approach ran and gave them notice. 
Five others of our company, well armed, who followed 
some miles behind, met with equally civil treatment the 
same day. After we left to go to Lawrence, until we 
returned when disbanded, I did not see the least sign of 
cowardice or want of self-possession exhibited by any 
volunteer of the eleven companies who constituted the 
Free-State force ; and I never expect again to see an 
equal number of such well-behaved, cool, determined men. 
We all returned safe and well, with the excep- 
tion of hard colds." 

From that December day until he left Kansas 
ten months later, Brown was the most active and 
trusted hero of Kansas. Other men played their 
parts well, but Brown's was the name that made 
the deepest impression on friends and foes. His 
battles were skirmishes, but they had the twofold 
effect of alarming the slavery propaganda at 
Washington, and retaining on their farms the 
harassed and plundered citizens, until the aid and 
the weapons that our committees sent them put 
them in a good posture of defense. While I was 
traversing Iowa in the interest of the emigration 
from east of the Mississippi, Governor Geary, a 
Pennsylvania Democrat (who had been appointed 
to succeed the incompetent Shannon, and directed 
to " stop the fighting in Kansas " in the interest 
of Buchanan, the successful presidential candidate 
of that year), was proceeding up the Missouri 
River, to take command in the Territory, and 
do that very thing. So long as Missouri and 



Kansas and Virginia 89 

South Carolina were invading Kansas, and so 
long as Brown and Walker, Abbott, Shore, 
Montgomery, Lane, and other fighting leaders 
were in the field against them, the vote of Penn- 
sylvania in the close contest for President was 
doubtful. Had it refused its vote to Buchanan, 
Fremont would have been elected, and the Civil 
War would have begun four years earlier than it 
did under Abraham Lincoln. Geary, in fact, 
sided with the Free State men, released the im- 
prisoned Northern men, and allowed Brown to 
leave Kansas without being arrested for acts that 
could have been punishable under the wicked slave 
code of the Territory, imposed by voters from Mis- 
souri. For this conduct, after the election of 
Buchanan w^as made certain, and Geary's honest 
services were no longer required, he was removed 
by President Pierce, to whom he had written the 
truth about Kansas affairs. I saw him in Phila- 
delphia in 1857, and he confirmed to me in conver- 
sation what he had written to General Pierce the 
winter before. Some of his words may be quoted: 
(Dec. 22, 1856.) 

" I could not have credited it unless I had seen it with 
my own eyes, and had the most conclusive evidence of the 
fact — that public officers would have lent themselves to 
carry out schemes which at once set at naught every 
principle of right and justice upon which the equality 
and existence of our government is founded. You know 
that there is no man in the Union that more heartily 
despises the abolitionists than I do, or more clearly per- 
ceives the pernicious tendency of their doctrines ; and on 



90 Recollections of Seventy Years 

this question I trust I am an impartial judge. The perse- 
cutions of the Free-State men here were not exceeded by 
those of the early Christians. . . . The men holding 
official position have never given you that impartial in- 
formation . . . which your high position so impera- 
tively demanded. ... I am satisfied that there was 
a settled determination in high quarters, to make this a 
Slave State at all hazards; that policy was communicated 
here, to agents, and most of the public officers sent here 
were secured for its success. The consequence was that 
when Northern emigrants came here at an early day — 
even before the Emigrant Aid Societies began to excite 
public attention — certain persons along the borders of 
Missouri began to challenge unexceptionable settlers. 
Finding many not for a slave State, they were subjected 
to various indignities, and told that this soil did not 
belong to such as them, and that they must settle in 
Nebraska. These immigrants, highly conservative in their 
character, excited by this unjust treatment, wrote back 
to their friends in the North; and thus by a little indis- 
cretion on the part of over-zealous persons in Missouri, a 
spark was ignited which nearly set the whole country in 
a flame. This virulent spirit of dogged determination, 
to force slavery into this Territory, has overshot its mark, 
and raised a storm. . . . Lecompte, Donaldson, 
Clai'ke, Woodson, Calhoun, and Isaacs were prominent 
actors in this fearful tragedy, and willing tools to carry 
out this wicked policy. They have therefore destroyed 
their public usefulness." 

While Governor Geary was thus truthfully and 
loyally describing to his official superior the pro- 
slavery conspiracy, Charles Robinson had given to 
John Brown this testimonial, and it was on its way 



Kansas and Virginia 91 

to me, with the indorsements of Governor Chase of 
Ohio (afterward Chief Justice) and of Gerrit 
Smith. The Free State Governor of Kansas wrote 
to Brown (September 14, 1856) : 

" Your course, so far as I have been informed, has 
been such as to merit the highest praise from every 
patriot. . . . History will give your name a proud 
place on her pages, and posterity will pay homage to your 
heroism in the cause of God and humanity." 

In his letters of 1884-188.5, after deserting his 
party, Robinson struggled to show that this letter 
was a forgery. Before showing it to me, as Brown 
did early in January, 1857, he had shown it to Gov- 
ernor Chase of Ohio, who wrote (and I saw the 
note), dating December 20, 1856: 

" I have also seen a letter from Governor Charles 
Robinson, whose handwriting I recognize, speaking of 
Captain Brown and his services to the cause of the Free- 
State men in Kansas in terms of the warmest com- 
mendation." 

Brown showed this note and Robinson's longer 
letter (December 30, 1856) to Gerrit Smith, who 
then wrote: 

" You did not need to show me letters from Governor 
Chase and Governor Robinson to let me know who and 
what you are. I have known you many years, and have 
highly esteemed you as long as I have known you." 

I had met Charles Robinson in Boston in Octo- 
ber, 1856, and had received letters from him for 



92 Recollections of Seventy Years 

our committee, so that I could also recognize the 
handwriting when Brown showed me the two let- 
ters of Robinson in January, 1857. At the time 
they were written Robinson had reason to know, as 
I had not, that Brown had directed the Pottawa- 
tomie executions of May 24, 1856, immediately 
after the sack of Lawrence by Atchison of Mis- 
souri and his followers. I shall speak of that mat- 
ter later; but here I may quote what Colonel Sam 
Walker, one of Brown's constant friends in Kan- 
sas, said to me in 1882, detailing a conversation he 
had with Brown early in August, 1856, as they 
were on an expedition to escort General Lane back 
into Kansas; 

" As we rode along together, Brown was in a sort of 
study ; and I said to him, ' Captain Brown, I wouldn't 
have your thoughts for anything in the world.' Brown 
said, ' I suppose you are thinking about the Pottawatomie 
affair.' Said I, ' Yes.' Then he stopped and looked at 
me, and said, ' Captain Walker, I saw that whole thing, 
but I did not strike a blow. I take the responsibility of 
it; but there were men who advised doing it, and after- 
ward failed to justify it, . . .' [I believed him] for 
Brown would never tell me what was not true, and would 
not deny to me anything he had really done." 

This conversation was about August 9. I pub- 
lished the substance of it in the Boston Transcript 
in December, 1884 — having got Walker's permis- 
sion in 1882 to make it public. Being appealed to 
by Robinson or Mr. Lawrence to contradict it, 
Walker wrote to Robinson in a letter of Decem- 
ber 16, 1884, from Lawrence: 



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Kansas and Virginia 93 

" Mr. Sanborn's article in the Boston Transcript is in 
the main correct, except that Lane and you advised me 
to go down to the Pottawatomie and kill those men. . . . 
What I said was that Brown told me that you and Lane 
advised him to strike a blow, and now when he had done 
it you would not sustain him. I told him [Brown] such 
a plan had been proposed to me, but there was no place 
or party mentioned, but you was not one of the gentle- 
men that talked to me about it, and I do not wish to say 
who they were." 

It is quite possible that Lane was one of them, 
for he was often wild in his talk. 

A little before this conversation with Captain 
Walker, John Brown had been seen by a Free State 
settler in northern Kansas, Samuel Reader, living 
near Pony Creek, and we have from his journal of 
the period, revised some time afterward, a striking 
picture of the Kansas hero on two occasions — Sun- 
day, August 3, 1856, and again Thursday, August 
7 ; the first time in Kansas, the second in Nebraska, 
near the border-line. As he was out with his gun 
on the first occasion, looking for game, he met two 
men traveling northward with a covered wagon 
drawn by a yoke of oxen. They proved to be John 
Brown, with his son Frederick, or possibly his 
youngest son, Oliver, but were then unknown to 
Reader, who says: 

" One was a young man, somewhat above the ordinary 
height ; the other, quite old. Both were walking, and 
both were dusty, and travel-stained. The team was 
stopped, and the old man inquired of me : ' Do you be- 



94 Recollections of Seventy Years 

long to a Free-State party, in camp near by ? ' I replied 
that I did. 'Where is your camp?' I pointed in its di- 
rection, and was about to continue on my wa}', when he 
detained me. ' Your coming has caused a good deal of 
excitement among the Pro-Slavery men living on the 
road. They didn't mind talking with us about it, as we 
are surveyors.' He motioned with his hand toward the 
wagon. I looked, and noticed for the first time a sur- 
veyor's chain hanging partly over the front end-board 
of the wagon. Just behind was a compass and tripod, 
standing up under the wagon cover. It struck me that 
he might possibly be Pro-Slavery himself, so I answered 
his direct questions, but ventured to make no remarks 
myself. I had been cautioned to be very careful what 
I said to men living along our line of march. The ox- 
team naturally led me to suppose that these men were 
settlers near by. . . . 'Where do you live?' he 
asked. ' Indianola.' ' yes ! I know. It is a hard place, 
and has got a very bad reputation. I have heard of it.' 
' Have you ever been in a fight? ' he next inquired. ' No.' 
' Well,' he continued, ' you may possibly see some fight- 
ing, soon. If you ever do get in a battle, always remem- 
ber to aim low. You will be apt to overshoot at first.' 
Perhaps I smiled a little, for he added : ' Maybe you 
think me a little free in offering advice ; but I am some- 
what older than you, and that ought to be taken in 
account.' He said this gravely and pleasantly. The 
younger man, behind him, was looking at me, with a broad 
grin on his face, had not a word to say, but seemed 
vastly amused at something. We separated. They 
forded the [Pony] creek, and went in the direction of 
[our] camp." 

Reader presently met one of his party who told 
him that the old man (Brown was fifty-six the 8th 



Kansas and Virginia 95 

of May before) was John Brown, at which Reader 
was delighted, because, he says, " even at that early 
date Brown was a very noted man, and was trusted 
and esteemed by all who held anti-slavery views." 
The same afternoon Reader's party broke camp 
and moved northward in a marching column, go- 
ing to meet and escort some incoming Free State 
immigrants. Soon he had a chance to see Brown 
again, for he says: 

" We had been on the road perhaps an hour or more, 
when some one in front shouted, ' There he is ! ' Sure 
enough, it was Brown. Just ahead of us we saw the dingy 
old wagon-cover, and the two men, and the oxen, plod- 
ding slowly onward. As we passed the old man, on either 
side of the road, we rent the air with cheers. If John 
Brown ever delighted in the praises of men, his pleasure 
must have been gratified, as he walked along, enveloped 
in our shouting column. But I fear he looked upon such 
things as vainglorious, for if he responded by word or 
act I failed to see or hear it. I looked at him closely. 
He was rather tall, and lean, with a tanned, weather- 
beaten aspect, like a rough, hard-working old farmer. 
He appeared to be unarmed. His face was shaven, and 
he wore a cotton shirt, partly covered by a vest. His hat 
was well worn, and his general appearance, dilapidated, 
dusty, and soiled. He turned from his ox team and 
glanced at our party from time to time as we were pass- 
ing him. At the top of the next ridge I glanced back- 
ward, and looked again at the homely, humble figure, 
following in our wake at a snail's pace." 

Once more, on August 7, Reader saw Brown; 
this time mounted, and with the air of a comman- 



96 Recollections of Seventy Years 

der. The company was in Nebraska; the immi- 
grants had been met, and M^ere to cross the Hne into 
Kansas. Reader goes on: 

" We were about ready to start, when Col. Dickey 
came over to us and read a paper of instructions from his 
superiors. There it was in black and white, that armed 
men should not escort the train when it crossed the line 
into Kansas. Some heated discussion followed. Dickey 
urged us to put our arms in the wagons, and as soon as 
we were across the line we could take them back again. 
Other men joined the Colonel, and expostulated with our 
obdurate commander. [This was A. D. Stevens,* who 
was with Brown at Harper's Ferry]. Captain Whipple 
was standing a few feet in front of our line, and not three 
paces from where I stood. A horseman rode up in front 
of him. I looked up. It was Old Osawatomie Brown. 
He addressed himself earnestly to Whipple. 

" ' Do as they wish. This train is to enter Kansas as 
a peaceable emigrant train. It will never do to have it 
escorted by armed men. As soon as we are across the 
line, there will be no objection to your retaking your 
arms. Let us all stay together. Your services may be 
needed.' 

" There was more to the same effect. Capt. Whipple 
said but little in reply. He was striking the ground at 
his feet with the point of his sword, during most of the 
conversation. He looked obstinate, and sullen — ^some- 
thing like a big school-boy when taken to task by his 
teacher. 

" ' Perhaps,' added Brown, ' you don't know me ; you 
don't know who I am.? ' 

" ' Yes I do,' exclaimed Whipple ; ' I know who you 

* He then called himself Whipple. 



Kansas and Virginia 97 

are, well enough; but all the same, we are not going to 
part with our arms. We came armed, and we're going 
back armed.' 

" I was somewhat surprised to learn by this conver- 
sation that Brown and Whipple were strangers to each 
other. Brown saw that further entreaty would be use- 
less. He turned, and rode away. It was the last time 
I ever saw him." 

After this scene, which proves the charge false 
that Brown was always eager to attack the United 
States troops in Kansas — which he never wished to 
do — he returned to the scene of guerrilla warfare 
near Lawrence, and remained there and near Osa- 
watomie, where one of his most famous fights oc- 
curred, late in August, until he left the Territory 
in October. Though urged to arrest him by the 
pro-slavery party. Governor Geary had no more 
wish to bring him to trial than President Lincoln 
had, nine years after, to arrest Jefferson Davis, 
after the capture of Richmond. Colonel Walker 
in 1882 told me this anecdote of September, 1856, 
to illustrate the perplexed situation under Gover- 
nor Geary. He had made Walker, though the cap- 
tain of a Free State band of eighty men, his United 
States marshal, to serve processes and make arrests. 
One morning, after one of Brown's exploits which 
had made much noise, Geary sent a note to Walker, 
as he was drilling his men out on the field, telling 
him to get word to Brown that a warrant was out 
against him, which must be served, and that Brown 
must get away. Walker saw a man looking on 
whom he had before seen in Brown's camp ; he took 



98 Becollections of Seventy Years 

him one side, showed him Geary's note, and told 
him to find and warn Brown, who was then on the 
Wakarusa, some ten miles from Lawrence. Not 
long after came an orderly from Governor Geary 
with a warrant against Brown, which Walker (the 
deputy marshal) must serve with his posse, " Take 
him, dead or alive [was the order] ; and for this I 
shall hold you. Captain Walker, personally respon- 
sible." He took the warrant and made search for 
Brown, who, of course, was not to be found. 
Walker soon learned that the man he had sent to 
warn Brown was James Montgomery, afterward a 
fighter in Kansas and a colonel of colored soldiers 
in the Civil War. 

About this time General Lane was at Nebraska 
City, where I had been three weeks earlier, and 
Wentworth Higginson met him there — " a thin 
man of middle age, in a gray woolen shirt, with 
keen eyes, smooth tongue, and a suggestion of 
courteous and even fascinating manners." Lane 
was then retreating from Kansas in deference to 
the orders of Geary, the new Governor, but de- 
layed two days at Nebraska City, and made a 
speech, of which Higginson says: 

" I have seldom heard eloquence more thrilling, more 
tactful, better adjusted to the occasion. Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, I remember, was much impressed by a report 
of this speech as sent by me to some Boston newspaper." 

Lane was on his way East to take part in the 
speaking campaign for Fremont, as he afterward 
did for the election and re-election of Abraham 




LOG-CABIX OF REV. S. L. ADAIR, 

A Refuge of John Brown, Osawatomie, 1855-18o8. 




MR. ADAIR IN HIS t ABIX 



Kansas and Virginia 99 

Lincoln. Brown came eastward much more slowly, 
only reaching Tabor, in Iowa, October 10, 1856. 
The next day he wrote to his family at North Elba, 
where I visited them for the first time the next 
August, the following letter: 

" Tabor, Iowa, 11th Oct., 1856. 
" Dear Wife and Children, every one: 

" I am, through infinite grace, once more in a Free 
State; and on my way to make you a visit. I left Kansas 
a day or two since, by a wagon in which I had a bed; as 
I was so unwell that I had to lie down. I first had the 
dysentery, and then chill fever. Am now rapidly im- 
proving. Wealthy and Ellen [wives of John Brown, Jr., 
and Jason] with their little boys started for home by way 
of the River about ten days since. John, Jason and 
Owen all came out with me. John and Jason have gone 
on toward Chicago with a horse ; but expect to meet me 
next week, on the Railroad on the East line of the State 
[Iowa]. I expect to go by stage. Owen thinks of win- 
tering here. 

" Mr. Adair and family were all middling well, two 
weeks ago. Mr. Day and family have been sick, but were 
better. When we left there seemed to be a little calm for 
the present in Kansas ; cannot say how long it will last. 
You need not be anxious about me, if I am some time on 
the road, as I have to stop at several places. I go some 
out of my way, having left partly on business, expecting 
to return if the troubles continue in Kansas and my 
health will admit. Now that I am where I can write you, 
I may do it middling often. May God bless and keep 
you all! 

" Your Affectionate Husband and Father, 

" John Brown." 



100 Recollections of Seventy Years 

This letter shows that none of the Brown family 
(who had numbered fourteen in the early summer 
of 1856, all living within a few miles of Osawat- 
omie) remained in that Territory in October, ex- 
cept Frederick, who had been buried near where he 
was murdered, August 30. His funeral was held 
at the house of his aunt, Mrs. S. L. Adair, the half- 
sister of John Brown. Mr. Adair was a missionary 
preacher, at whose log-cabin the Browns often 
lodged, in that and later years. Their own cabins 
had been burned and their growing crops destroyed 
by invaders from Missouri. Mr. Day was a rela- 
tive of Mrs. John Brown, and had a cabin near 
the Browns. I visited the spot in after years, and 
found a few of the fruit trees planted by Jason 
]Brown still standing and bearing fruit. 

Those members of the family not named in the 
letter were Ruth Thompson, the eldest daughter, 
whose husband, Henry Thompson, badly wounded 
in June, was going back to the Adirondac woods, 
and Salmon and Oliver, eldest and youngest sons 
of the second marriage, who were on their way 
thither. Watson, their brother, met his father in 
Iowa, on his way to join the fighters in Kansas, 
and turned back with his brothers. I saw all these 
men except Oliver, who was then with his father 
in Iowa, at the North Elba farmhouse, in August, 
1857, when I went there on an errand soon to be 
related. Thompson recovered from his wound, and 
is yet living, though a great invalid, in Pasadena, 
Cahfornia. Jason is living with his son in Akron, 
Ohio, at the age of 86, and " Wealthy," Mrs. John 
Brown, Jr., is living with her children at Put-in- 



Kansas and Virginia 101 

Bay, an island in Lake Erie, where her home has 
been for forty-six years. 

The head of this great family, almost a clan by 
itself, reached Chicago about October 24, and was 
there met and cared for by the National Kansas 
Committee, whom I had met in August. He was 
still wearing the summer garments in which he had 
fought his Kansas battles ; but was taken in charge 
by Horace White, and fitted out, at the cost of the 
committee, with a full winter suit of brown, giving 
him the look of a New England deacon. But he 
wore a military stock and gray overcoat, which sus- 
tained his common title of " Captain Brown," by 
which we all knew him for the rest of his days. It 
was due to his air and habit of command; but it 
was also a title regularly conferred in December, 
1855, by Major-General Charles Robinson and 
Brigadier-General Jim Lane, as the following 
certificate in my possession, with its autograph sig- 
natures, may show : 

" Headquarters, Kansas Volunteers, 

" Lawrence City, December 11, 1855. 

" This Is to certify that John Brown Jr. faithfully 
and gallantly served as private In the Liberty Guards, 
Kansas Volunteers, from the 27th day of November, 1855, 
to the 13th day of December, 1855, In defending the city 
of Lawrence in Kansas Territory, from demolition by 
foreign Invaders ; when he was honorably discharged from 
said service. " John Brown, Captain. 

" [Countersigned] 

" George W. Smith, Col. Com'g 5th Regt. Kansas Vols. 

" J. H. Lane, Gen, 1st Brig. Kansas Vols. 

" C. Robinson, Maj. Gen." 



102 Recollections of Seventy Years 

As Captain Brown and his sons all became " Lib- 
erty Guards " at the same time, they had been in 
the service fom'teen days. In Lawrence, however, 
they had arrived in the forenoon of December 7 — 
Brown and four of his sons only. Jason and 
Oliver, with Henry Thompson, his son-in-law, had 
been ill at Jason's camp, eight miles northwest of 
Osawatomie, and were unable to march. George 
W. Brown, who has written copiously on all sides 
of the Kansas questions and drawn much on his 
imagination, says he saw Brown and his party ar- 
rive a little before sunset, seven in number — there 
were actually five — and about December 3, three 
days before they appeared. He then adds, in sub- 
stance : 

" As the party dismounted [from a lumber wagon] I 
grasped the hands of John and Frederick Brown, who 
introduced me to their father and brothers. [These were 
Owen and Salmon Brown.] I took the whole family to 
the rooms of the Committee of Safety and introduced 
them. Here, at my suggestion, John Brown was first 
clothed with the title of Captain, conferred on him by 
Governor Robinson, and approved by the Committee of 
Pubhc Safety." 

Brown was introduced to his Massachusetts 
friends by this title, and to the Massachusetts 
Legislature by me in the February following his 
introduction to me. Soon after this legislative 
hearing, at which Brown spoke, he visited me in 
Concord (March, 1856), where I was then living 
at the house of my poet-friend, EUery Channing, 



Kansas and Virginia 103 

on the Main Street, opposite the home of the Tho- 
reau family. Mr. Channing himself was living in 
New Bedford, engaged in editing the Mercury 
newspaper, and the whole house was at my disposal, 
except the rooms occupied by his faithful house- 
keeper, Ann Carney, who also acted in that capac- 
ity for my sister Sarah. I therefore gave Brown 
the spare chamber which Mr. Channing, when at 
home, reserved for his own visitors, and took him 
with me at noon, across the street, to dine at IVIrs. 
Thoreau's table, where I was then dining daily, 
and where some of my pupils were boarding. All 
Concord had heard the year before of Brown's 
fights and escapes in Kansas; and Thoreau, who 
had his own bone to pick with the civil government, 
which he had resisted while at Walden, and had 
gone to prison rather than pay a tax to uphold 
slavery, was desirous of meeting Brown. My 
school at this time claimed part of my attention, 
for young Abbot, though a fine scholar, had not 
the gift of authority; and at two o'clock I left 
Brown and Thoreau discussing Kansas affairs in 
Mrs. Thoreau's dining-room, or in the parlor, in 
which, five years after, Thoreau died. Brown nar- 
rated in detail to Thoreau his most noted battle in 
Kansas— that of Black Jack, the June before, 
where, with nine men, he captured twenty-odd men 
under the command of Henry Clay Pate, of Vir- 
ginia. In this surrender he took charge of Cap- 
tain Pate's " side-arms," and among others, a mag- 
nificently mounted Bowie-knife, presented to Pate 
by his friends in Virginia, when he started out to 



104 Recollections of Seventy Years 

subjugate the wicked abolitionists who had pre- 
sumed to migrate to Kansas, and there oppose 
negro slavery. To me also, in the evening after, 
as we sat by my fire in the Channing house. Brown 
related the story of this capture, and when he men- 
tioned the knife, I said, "What became of that? " 
Brown gravely pulled up the right leg of his ker- 
seymere trousers, above the top of his high boot, 
and drew from that crypt the sheathed knife which 
Pate had worn in another part of l^s outfit. It was 
the blade of this formidable knife which, the fol- 
lowing spring, served as pattern for the thousand 
pike-heads made for Brown at Collinsville in Con- 
necticut. 

While Thoreau and Brown sat thus conversing 
in the early afternoon of a short winter day, Emer- 
son, who had returned from his Western lecture- 
tour, came up, as he often did, to call on Thoreau, 
and was introduced by him to John Brown. He 
invited Brown to his own house, where Brown 
spent the second night of this two-days' visit at 
Concord. Or rather, the Emerson house being full, 
he took Brown to lodge at the ancient farmhouse 
of the late Deacon Brown, now the Antiquarian 
JNIuseum, where Emerson hired a large room for 
his own use when he sought retirement, and for his 
visitors of the night, if the beds were occupied 
at home. From the conversation at Thoreau's 
(now the home of Mr. Alcott's grandson, Fred- 
erick Pratt), and from the longer intercourse of 
Saturday night, when Brown was Emerson's guest, 
came to Emerson and Thoreau that intimate knowl- 



Kansas and Virginia 105 

edge of Brown's character and general purpose 
which qualified them, in October, 1859, to make 
those addresses in his behalf which were the first 
response among American scholars to the heroism 
of the man who, in Emerson's striking phrase, 
"made the gallows glorious like the Cross.'' But 
Emerson had long been attentive to what was go- 
ing wrong in Kansas and in the nation at large. 
He had given 850 to aid the Free State men in 
May, '56, and he had consented to speak to his 
Harvard College friends in September, at the in- 
vitation of our Middlesex County Committee, of 
which one of the college faculty, James Jennison. 
had become a member. The call for tliis meeting, 
which was not very largely attended, as I cut it 
from the Cambridge Chronicle at the time, is this: 

" AID FOR KANSAS. 

" The Inhabitants of Cambridge, of all sects and 
parties, who desire that peace, with free institutions, may 
be established ia Kansas, are invited to meet at Lyceum 
HaU on Wednesday evening. Sept. 10, at T 1-2 o'clock, 
to consider the present condition of the inhabitants of 
that Territory, and what aid we can properly afford them 
in this time of their trial and suffering. 

" RALPH WALDO EMERSON wiU address the meet- 
ig. E. B. Whitman. Esq., our fellow citizen, is expected 
from Lawrence, [K. T.] with late and reliable news, but 
should he not arrive, other gentlemen recently from 
Kansas, will be present and give information concerning 
the management of the funds already collected, the pres- 
ent necessities of the people and their prospects for the 



106 Recollections of Seventy Years 

future, with other matters relating to the Territory, of 
interest to every humane and patriotic citizen. 

" Several gentlemen of Cambridge, who never speak 
but to delighted ears, are engaged to give their voices to 
the cause of Free Kansas, on this occasion. 

" Let us ' strengthen the things which remain and are 
ready to die.' By request of the Middlesex County 

Kansas Fund Committee." 

In course of his short address, Emerson had this 
pungent criticism on the courts of Kansas under 
the appointment of President Pierce of New 
Hampshire : 

" The President told a Kansas committee that the 
whole difficulty there grew ' from the factious spirit of 
the Kansas people respecting institutions which they need 
not have concerned themselves about.' A very remarkable 
speech from a Democratic President to his fellow citizens — 
that they are not to concern themselves with institutions 
which they alone are to create and determine. If that 
be Government, extirpation is the only cure. ... In 
the free States we give a sniveling support to Slavery. 
The judges give cowardly interpretations to the law, in 
direct opposition to the known foundation of all law — that 
every immoral statute is void. And here of Kansas the 
President says, ' Let the complainants go to the courts " ; 
though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer 
comes to the court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed 
him dismounting from his own horse, and unbuckling his 
knife to sit as his judge." 

I was present at this Cambridge meeting in my 
capacity as secretary of the Middlesex Committee, 



Kansas and Virginia 107 

and I preserved a saying of Emerson's that did not 
get into his manuscript. It illustrates how he could 
be more concise than that marvel of compression 
in his rhetoric, Tacitus, the Roman historian. 
Speaking of the absence, from the champions of 
slavery and the defenders of legalized anarchy in 
Kansas, of the great authorities in law and morals, 
he said it was like the omission from the funeral of 
Junia of the images of Brutus and Cassius, of 
which Tacitus had said: 

" Eo ipso praefulgehant quod non visebantur "; 

adding in a swift version of the pregnant Latin, 
" They glared out of their absences." 



CHAPTER IV 

Concord and North Elba 

THE speech made by Brown in Concord, 
Saturday evening, in March, 1857, has 
been confounded, in Dr. Edward Emer- 
son's notes to his father's Boston speech 
on Brown, with Brown's later one, made Saturday 
or Sunday evening in May, 1859, in which he told the 
story of his invasion of Missouri in the Christmas 
holidays of 1858, bringing away a dozen slaves, 
emancipated by force, a little more than two years 
before the Union army began to follow Brown's 
example in this respect. It was for his speech of 
1857 that Brown brought with him the trace-chain 
with which his son John had been bound in Kansas, 
and made to keep up with the mounted men who 
were carrying him to his imprisonment at Lecomp- 
ton, from which he had only been released a few 
weeks when he accompanied his father to Tabor, 
as mentioned in the letter just quoted. Both the 
chain and the Bowie-knife were shown by him in 
1857, but only the knife in 1859. But Dr. Emer- 
son, then a schoolboy under my instruction, has 
preserved one recollection of the evening at his 
father's house, when, as he says : 

" Brown told of his experiences as a sheep-farmer, and 
his eye for animals and power over them. He said he 

108 



Concord and North Elba 109 

knew at once a strange sheep in his flock of many hun- 
dred, and that he could make a dog or cat so uncomfort- 
able as to wish to leave the room — simply by fixing his 
eyes on it." 

Several persons have heard from Brown his deal- 
ings with his flocks near Akron, Ohio, where he 
herded the sheep of Colonel Simon Perkins, but no 
one else, I think, has mentioned th^s hypnotic power 
over animals. In 1878 I visited Colonel Perkins, 
and questioned him about his relations with Brown, 
of which he was rather unwilling to talk. He 
was eight years younger than Brown, and Hke him, 
born of Connecticut parentage, but in northern 
Ohio; a man of wealth, who had lost money by his 
partnership with John Brown and misconceived his 
character in some points. I saw his great sheep- 
farm a mile west of Akron Station, and the plain 
farmhouse where Brown lived, across the road from 
the great stone mansion of Colonel Perkins. There, 
in 1844, Perkins kept 1500 sheep, of which for 
some years Brown and his sons had the care. The 
gruff old man told me, in May, 1878, that Brown 
"was a rough herdsman, but a nice judge of wool; 
the shepherd dogs which he used did more harm 
than good, but they were in fashion then." He 
added that Brown had not much experience in 
sheep-raising when he took charge of the Perkins 
flock, and did not at first take the best care of 
them. "He did not fellowship with any church 
very much, and always acted upon his own im- 
pulses — he would not listen to anybody." Such 



110 Recollections of Seventy Years 

was the old capitalist's view. Emerson had quite 
another conception of Brown. He said at Salem 
(January 6, 1860) : 

" A shepherd and herdsman, he learned the manners of 
animals, and knew the secret signals by which animals 
communicate. He made his hard bed on the mountains 
with them ; he learned to drive his flock through thickets 
all but impassable; he had all the skill of a shepherd, by 
choice of breed and by wise husbandry to obtain the 
best wool, and that for a course of years. If he kept 
sheep, it was with a royal mind; and if he traded in wool 
he was a merchant-prince — not in the amount of wealth, 
but in his protection of the interests confided to him." 

No report was made of Brown's Concord speech 
in 1857, but Emerson in his journal preserved this 
passage: "One of his good points M^as the folly 
of the peace party in Kansas — who believed that 
their strength lay in the greatness of their wrongs, 
and so discountenanced resistance. Well, was their 
wrong greater than the negro slave's? and what 
kind of strength has that given to the negro?" 

Thoreau's journal of Brown's first visit to Con- 
cord, and his conversation by the fireside, has dis- 
appeared, being included in his " Plea for Captain 
John Brown," the most of which he took from his 
journal pages, as his manner was, in ^vriting 
speeches or essays. But he records several sayings 
of Brown's, which I heard at the table as we dined 
together. Others of the same tenor I had from 
Brown as we were driving or traveling together in 
Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. Thoreau says: 



Concord and North Elba 111 

" I heard Brown say that his father was a contractor 
who furnished beef to the army in the War with England 
in 1812; that he accompanied his father to the camp, 
seeing a good deal of military life; more, perhaps, than 
if he had been a soldier, for he was often present at the 
councils of officers. Especially he learned by experience 
how armies are supplied and maintained in the field — a 
work which, he observed, required at least as much ex- 
perience and skill as to lead them in battle. Few persons, 
he said, had any conception of the cost, even the pecuniary 
cost, of firing a single bullet in war. He saw enough in 
that war to disgust him with a military life — indeed, to 
excite in him a great abhorrence of it. So much so that 
though he was tempted by the offer of some petty office 
in the army, when he was about 18, he not only declined 
that, but also refused to ' train ' when ' warned ' and was 
fined for it. He resolved then not to have anything to 
do with any war, unless it were a war for liberty. 

" When he went to Europe in the wool-business, there, 
as everywhere, he had his eyes about him, and made many 
original observations. He saw, for instance, why the 
soil of England was so rich, and that of Germany so 
poor ; it was because the peasantry in England live on 
the soil which they cultivate, while in Germany they are 
gathered into villages at night.* 

" As for his tact and prudence — at a time when scarcely 
a man from the Free States was able to reach Kansas, 
by any direct route, at least, without having his arms 
taken from him. Brown, carrying what imperfect guns 
and other weapons he could collect, openly and slowlj^ 

* What Brown said to me on this topic was, that this retiring 
from the fields to sleep in the villages, with their cattle and 
horses, was " taking the natural manures away from the soil " in 
German and Belgian rural districts. He also commented unfavor- 
ably on the Austrian soldiers, as contrasted with the French. 



112 Recollections of Seventy Years 

drove a cart through Missouri, apparently in the char- 
acter of a surveyor, with his surveying compass exposed 
in it; and so passed unsuspected, and had ample oppor- 
tunity to learn the designs of the enemy. When I ex- 
pressed surprise that he could live in Kansas, with so 
large a number exasperated against him (including the 
authorities), he accounted for it by saying, 'It is per- 
fectly well understood that I will not be taken.' He could 
even come out into a town where there were more Border 
Ruffians than Free-State men, and transact some business 
(without delaying long) and yet not be molested. For, 
said he, ' No handful of men were willing to undertake it, 
and a large body could not be got together in season.' 
In his camp, as I myself heard him state, he permitted 
no profanity, and no man of loose morals was suffered 
to remain there, unless as a prisoner of war. ' I would 
rather,' said he, ' have the small-pox, yellow fever and 
cholera altogether in my camp, than men without prin- 
ciple. Give me men of good principles — God-fearing 
men — men who respect themselves ; and with a dozen of 
them I will oppose any hundred such men as those Buford 
ruffians.' And I noticed that he did not overstate any- 
thing, but spoke within bounds. I remember particularly 
how, in his speech at the Town Hall, he referred to what 
his family had suffered in Kansas, without ever giving 
the least vent to his pent-up fire. It was a volcano with 
an ordinary chimney-flue. Referring to the deeds of cer- 
tain Border Ruffians, he said, rapidly paring away his 
speech, like an experienced soldier, keeping a reserve of 
force and meaning — ' They had a perfect right to be 
hung.' " 

Brown had in his mind then, no doubt, the five 
victims of his Pottawatomie executions, although 
they were not specially mentioned; he was also 



Concord and North Elba 113 

thinking of such as gave illegal votes from INIis- 
souri in 1855-56. After this visit to Concord, about 
March 15, Brown went to Worcester, where he 
spoke at a public meeting, March 23, 1857, and 
visited Eli Thayer, in his " Oread Castle," where 
for some years Mr. Thayer had kept a school for 
girls, from which he withdrew in 1857, after his 
election to Congress in November, 1856.* 

Of Brown's appearance and mode of public 
speech at Worcester, President Wayland's son. 
Rev. H. L. Wayland, then a Baptist pastor in 
Worcester, wrote as follows, several years after 
Brown's death: 

" In the spring of 1857, just after the Dred Scott 

*Eli Thayer was born in Mendon, Massachusetts, June 11, 1819, 
and died in Worcester, April 15, 1899. He was graduated at Brown 
University in 1845, and in the same year began teaching in the 
Worcester Academy. While thus occupied he began to build his 
"Oread Institute" on a hill not far from that Academy, in 1848; 
and in the first tower of that building he opened a private school 
for girls in May, 1849, of which he remained the Principal until 
he retired in 1857, — still continuing to own the " Oread Castle " and 
to reside there when living in Worcester. In 1854, while a member 
of the General Court of Massachusetts, he organized the New 
England Emigrant Aid Company, and was active in its promotion 
and administration until elected to Congress in November, 1856. 
He served two terms at Washington (1857-1861), but was defeated 
for a third term at the election of 1860. His school continued until 
1881, but he did not direct it as Principal after leaving Congress; 
nor did his active interest in Kansas affairs continue beyond 1858. 
He then had a scheme for attacking slavery in Virginia by coloniza- 
tion, as in Kansas, and he made a beginning at a place in what 
is now West Virginia, which he called " Ceredo." But this did not 
long flourish, and was finally ended by the Civil War. He was for 
a short time a treasury agent under Secretary Chase in 1861 and 
1862, and in the latter year proposed to Secretary Stanton an emi- 
gration scheme for Florida, and other abortive plans for coloniza- 



114 Recollections of Seventy Years 

decision of the Supreme Court, I, being then a resident of 
Worcester, was getting up a lecture for Frederick Doug- 
lass, at which the then mayor of the city, for the first time 
in an American city, presided at an address of Mr. Doug- 
lass. I called at the house of Eli Thayer, afterwards 
member of Congress from that District, to ask him to 
sit on the platform. Here I found a stranger, a man 
of tall, gaunt form, with a face smooth-shaven, destitute 
of the full beard that later became a part of history. 
The children were climbing over his knees ; he said, ' The 
children always come to me.' I was then introduced to 
John Brown of Osawatomie. How little one imagined 
then that within less than three years the name of this 
plain home-spun man would fill America and Europe ! 
Mr. Brown consented to occupy a place on the platform, 
and at the urgent request of the audience spoke briefly. 
It is one of the curious facts, that many men who do it 
are utterly unable to tell about it. John Brown, a flame 
of fire in action, was dull in speech." 

The visit at Worcester, where Brown was the 
guest of Eli Thayer, followed his visit to me at 
Concord, and in consequence of these notes from 
Mr. Thayer, Congressman-elect from the Worces- 
ter district: 

tion in Utah and South America. From 1864 to 1870 he was land 
agent for a railroad in Missouri, with an ofBce in New York, but 
still had his family residence at " Oread " in Worcester. He left 
that home a short time before his death. During the eight years 
or more that he was Principal of his Institute, about two hundred 
girls were his pupils, by whom he is described as a good Latin 
scholar and a strict disciplinarian. A history (New Haven, 1905) 
of the school, under its successive Principals, has been published 
by Mrs. Martha Burt Wright of New Haven, giving sketches of 
Mr. Thayer, his pupils and their teachers. A manuscript biog- 
raphy of Mr. Thayer was prepared by Mr. Franklin P. Rice of 
Worcester some years since, which awaits publication. 



Concord and North Elba 115 

" Worcester, March 18, 1857. 
" Friend Brown: 

" I have just returned from Albany, and find your 
favor of the 16th. I am glad you had a good meeting 
at Concord — as I knew you would have, for the blood of 
heroes is not extinct in that locality. I will see some of 
our friends here to-morrow, and we will decide at once 
about your speaking here. If you are to speak, you will 
do well to be here a day or two in advance, and converse 
with some of our citizens. I will write you again to- 
morrow. 

" March 19. — I have seen some of our friends to-day, 
and they say you had better come here next Monday. 
There is to be an anti-slavery meeting in the evening, and 
I think it will be a very good time for you to present 
your cause — which is the Free-State cause of Kansas, 
which is the cause of mankind. I shall expect you to do 
me the favor of stopping at my house. 
" Truly yours, 

" Eli Thayer." 

Upon both these letters is this indorsement in 
the handwriting of John Brown: "Eli Thayer. 
Answered March 23d in person." This means that 
he went to Worcester that day, and in the evening 
met Dr. Wayland. A week later I was with 
Brown at the house of A. H. Reeder, the first Gov- 
ernor of Kansas, where I met Brown and Martin 
Conway, and with our united arguments, we tried 
to persuade Mr. Reeder to return to Kansas as the 
agent of the Kansas coromittees, and take the head 
of the Free State party there, in place of Charles 
Robinson, who had lost the confidence of many 



116 Recollections of Seventy Years 

men, there and in the East. How serious this af- 
fair was may be seen by the letter of Augustus 
Wattles to John Brown in the following summer. 
Writing from Lawrence, August 21, 1857, Wat- 
tles said: 

" I think Dr. Robinson's failure to meet the legislature 
last winter disheartened the people so that they lost 
confidence in liim and in the movement. Although in the 
Convention we invited him to withdraw his resignation 
(which he did), yet the masses could never be vitalized 
again into that enthusiasm and confidence which they had 
before. Another mistake which he made, equally fatal, 
was his attack upon George W. Brown and the " Herald 
of Freedom " ; thus leading off his friends into a party 
by themselves, and leaving all who doubted and hated 
him in another party." 

When thus meeting Brown and Conway at 
Easton, I was on my return from a first visit to 
Washington, in the early days of Buchanan's ad- 
ministration; but I had met there only a few per- 
sonal friends, Congress not being in session. At 
Philadelphia, either going or returning, I held 
a long interview with J. W. Geary, lately returned 
from his honorable but displaced post as Governor 
of Kansas, and full of wrath at the treatment he 
had received from President Pierce, who had ap- 
pointed him, and from President Buchanan, in 
whose interest as candidate Geary had accepted the 
appointment, seven months before. He was at the 
Continental Hotel, with his secretary, Dr. Gihon, 
who soon after published a book about the Kansas 



Concord and North Elba 117 

troubles, and I called on them there. I found 
Cieary a frank, vain person, whose self-compla- 
cency had suffered cruel mortification, and who had 
deserved a better treatment than he got, either 
from the pro-slavery administration or from our 
Free State friends, to whom, as I have mentioned, 
he had done good service, and, on the whole, given 
fair play. He afterward was a brave soldier on 
the Union side in the Civil War; but I never saw 
him again. 

We spent the whole afternoon at Governor 
Reeder's comfortable village house in Easton, and 
put our case fairly before him. Judge Conway 
spoke in the name of the few Free State lawyers 
in Kansas; I spoke for the Massachusetts Kansas 
Committee, as I had authority to do; and John 
Brown offered his services as commander of men in 
partisan warfare, should that be needful. Reeder 
heard us courteously, gave us the facts concerning 
his troubled career in the Territory, and showed 
courage and good sense in his conversation, as he 
had in his conduct while Governor. But he said 
that his personal interests had suffered by his ab- 
sence in Kansas ; that he must reconstruct his prac- 
tice as a lawyer, and that his first duty was to his 
family and neighbors in Pennsylvania. We could 
not deny this; he had been worse treated than 
Geary, and we ceased to urge him. Brown and I 
returned to New York, and Conway, I believe, 
went to visit his friends in Marjdand. From Eas- 
ton, ^larch 29, Brown wrote to Thayer at Wor- 
cester, suggesting aid for his company of Kansas 



118 Recollections of Seventy Years 

irregular cavalry, in raising which Thayer fully 
sympathized. He wrote to Brown in the most 
friendly tone, March 30, and told him that the 
Worcester County Committee would give him, 
through Colonel Higginson, $50 for his campaign. 
Again (April 17) Thayer wrote, partly in regard 
to his own rather futile scheme of colonizing West 
Virginia with anti-slavery men, and said: 

" Will you allow me to suggest a name for your com- 
pany? I should call them 'the Neighbors,' from Luke, 
tenth chapter : ' Which thinkest thou was neighbor to him 
who fell among thieves? ' 

" Our Virginia scheme is gaining strength wonder- 
fully. Every mail brings me offers of land and men. The 
press universally favors it — that is, so far as we care for 
favor. It is bound to go ahead. You must have a home 
in Western Virginia." 

In the meantime I had returned to Concord and 
Boston, and on the 15th of April, 1857, as a mem- 
ber of the Executive Committee, of which G. L. 
Stearns, Dr. S. G. Howe, Thomas Russell and one 
or two others were members with me, I moved and 
recorded these votes — a previous vote of the whole 
State Kansas Committee having given Brown the 
custody of our 200 Sharpe's rifles at Tabor and 
voted him $500 for the expense of taking and car- 
ing for them: 

Boston, April 15, 1857. 

" At a meeting of the executive committee of the State 
Kansas Aid Committee of Massachusetts, held in Boston, 
April 11, 1857, it was 



Concord and North Elba 119 

" Voted, That Captain John Brown be authorized to 
dispose of one hundred rifles, belonging to this commit- 
tee, to such Free-State inhabitants of Kansas as he 
thinks to be rehable, at a price not less than fifteen dol- 
lars ; and that he account for the same agreeably to his 
instructions, for the rehef of Kansas. 

" At the same meeting it was 

" Voted, That Captain John Brown be authorized to 
draw on P. T. Jackson, treasurer, for five hundred dol- 
lars, if on his arrival in Kansas he is satisfied that such 
sum is necessary for the relief of persons in Kansas." 

Brown had already received from members of 
our committee, and from others, so much prop- 
erty, that, in view of his taking the rifles also, he 
sat down in Boston, April 13, with his good friends, 
the Russells and Rev. Daniel Foster, and made the 
following provisional will for the protection of the 
property, in case of accident to him: 

" I, John Brown, of North Elba, N. Y., intending to 
visit Kansas, and knowing the uncertainty of life, make 
my last will as follows: I give and bequeath all trust 
funds and personal property for the aid of the Free- 
State cause in Kansas, now in my hands or in the hands 
of W. H. D. Callender, of Hartford, Conn., to George 
L. Stearns, of Medford, Mass., Samuel Cabot, Jr., of 
Boston, Mass., and Wilham H. Russell, of New Haven, 
Conn., to them and the survivor or survivors and their 
assigns forever, in trust that they will administer said 
funds and other property, including all now collected or 
hereafter to be collected by me or in my behalf for the 
aid of the Free-State cause in Kansas, leaving the manner 
of so doing entirely at their discretion. 



120 Recollections of Seventy Years 

" Signed at Boston, Mass., this 13th day of April, 
A. D., 1857, in presence of us, who, in presence of said 
Brown and of each other, have at liis request affixed our 
names as witnesses of his wilL The words ' and personal 
property ' and ' and other property ' interlined before 
signature by said Brown, and ' said Callender,' erased. 
"(Signed) John Brown. 

" Daniel Foster, 

" Mary Ellen Russell, 

" Thomas Russell, 

" Witnesses." 

During this visit of Brown to various parts of 
New England, New York and Pennsylvania, I saw 
much of him and of those who aided him in his 
general purpose of freeing Kansas, and ultimately 
the whole country, from negro slavery. His visit 
and his tours lasted for three or four months, and 
I was with him not only in Concord and Boston, 
but at New York, in a meeting of the National 
Kansas Committee, and in other places. This gave 
me opportunity to see him under many circum- 
stances, and to form my opinion of his extraor- 
dinary character — an opinion that I have had no 
occasion to change. Among those who also saw 
much of him at this time was Mr. Amos Lawrence, 
^father of the present Bishop Lawrence. He, like 
Eli Thayer and Charles Robinson, seemed to have 
the same friendship and admiration for Brown that 
I had. The day after Brown's address to the 
members of the Massachusetts Legislature in Feb- 
ruary, and again a month later, Mr. Lawrence, at 



Concord and North Elba 121 

.whose house he had been a guest, wrote to Brown 
in these terms: 

"Boston, Feb. 19, 1857. 
"Ml/ Dear Sir: 

" Enclosed you will find seventy dollars. Please write 
to John Conant, of East Jaffrey, N. H., and acknowl- 
edge receipt ; or write to me saying you have received 
the Jaffrey money, and I will send your letter to them. 
It is for your own personal use, and not for the cause 
in any other way than that. I am sorry not to have seen 
you before you left. It may not be amiss to say that you 
may find yourself disappointed if you rely on the Na- 
tional Kansas Committee for any considerable amount of 
money. Please to consider this as confidential ; and it is 
only my own opinion, without definite knowledge of their 
operations. 

(Private.) 

" Boston, March 20, 1857. 
" Mj/ Dear Sir: 

" Your letter from New Haven is received. I have just 
sent to Kansas near foui'teen thousand dollars to estab- 
lish a fund to be used, first, to secure the best system of 
common schools for Kansas that exists in this country ; 
second, to establish Sunday schools. The property is 
held by two trustees in Kansas, and cannot return to me. 
On this account, and because I am always short of 
money, I have not the cash to use for the purpose you 
name. But in case anything should occur, while you are 
engaged in a great and good cause, to shorten your life, 
you may be assured that your wife and children shall be 
cared for more liberally than you now propose. The 
family of ' Captain John Brown of Osawatomie ' will not 



122 Recollections of Seventy Years 

be turned out to starve in this country, until Liberty 
herself is driven out. 

" I hope you will not run the risk of arrest. Come 
and see me when you have time." 

Mr. Lawrence also undertook, with the aid of 
others, to raise $1,000 for the purchase of land at 
North Elba, to increase the home comfort of the 
wife and daughter of Brown, then living in the 
Adirondac forest with great simplicity and home. 
Jiness in their surroundings. Upon this matter, the 
following facts are interesting: 

At this time, of course, neither INIr. Lawrence, 
Mr. Stearns, Gerrit Smith, nor myself had any 
knowledge of the plan of Brown for a campaign 
in Virginia, but we were all willing that he should, 
under sufficient provocation, and for the better pro-- 
tection of our friends in Kansas, make incursions 
into Missouri. The subscription paper, drawn up 
by Mr. Lawrence, with its signatures, was as fol- 
lows: 

" The family of Captain John Brown of Osawatomie 
have no means of support, owing to the oppression to 
which he has been been subjected in Kansas Territory. 
It is proposed to put them (his wife and five children) in 
possession of the means of supporting themselves, so far 
as is possible for persons in their situation. The under- 
signed, therefore, will pay the following sums, provided 
one thousand dollars should be raised. With this sum a 
small farm can now be purchased in the neighborhood of 
their late residence in Essex County, New York." 



Paid. Amos A. Lawrence, 



Concord and North Elba 123 

May, 'S7. Paid. William R. Lawrence, Fifty dollars. 

one hundred dollars. 
$235 more. 

$335 

] Fifty dollars. 

I $235 more. 
Paid. George L. Stearns, > 

J $285 
Paid. John E. Lodge, twenty-five dollars. 
Paid. J. Carter Brown [by A. A. L.], one hundred dollars. 
Paid. J. M. S. Williams, fifty dollars. 
Paid. John Bertram [by M. S. W.], seventy-five dollars. 
Paid. W. D. Pickman, fifty dollars. 
Paid. R. P. Waters [by W. D. P.], ten dollars. 
Paid. S. E. Peabody, ten dollars. 
Paid. John H. Silsbee, ten dollars. 
Paid. B. Silsbee, five dollars. 
Paid. Cash, ten dollars. 
Paid. Wendell Phillips, twenty-five dollars. 
Paid. W. J. Rotch, ten dollars. 
Paid. George L. Stearns, two hundred and thirty-five 

dollars. 
Paid. A. A. Lawrence, two hundred and thirty-five dollars. 
One thousand dollars in all. July 27, 1857. 

Boston, Nov. 5. 1857. John Bertram's subscription 
being $75, instead of $25, as I supposed, I have returned 
to Amos A. Lawrence twenty-five dohars, making his 
whole subscription $310; my subscription $260; all others 
$430; total $1000. 

(Signed) George L. Stearns. 

The subscription thus raised was expended in 
completing the purchase of a tract, originally sold 
by Gerrit Smith to the brothers of Henry Thomp- 
son (Brown's son-in-law), but which had not been 
wholly paid for. In August, 1857, as the agent of 



124 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Messrs. Stearns and Lawrence, I visited North 
Elba, examined the land, paid the Thompsons their 
stipulated price for improvements, and to Mr. 
Smith the remainder of the purchase money, took 
the necessary deeds, and transferred the property 
to JNIrs. Brown and Mrs. Thompson, according to 
the terms arranged by Captain Brown in the pre- 
ceding spring. I preserved this pencil memoran- 
dum, in Gerrit Smith's familiar handwriting, show- 
ing this transaction : 

Draft of F. B. S $1000 

Due Thompsons $574 

Due me on note 111.66 

" " on land 288.89 974.55 

$95.45 

This sum ($25.45) I handed to Mrs. Brown at 
North Elba, August 13, 1857. A few days later 
I reported to Mr. Stearns as follows: 

" I wrote you from Buffalo, I think, telling you of the 
settling of the business of Captain Brown with Mr. 
Smith ; since when I have been in North Elba, and passed 
a night under his roof. There I found Mrs. Brown, a 
tall, large woman, fit to be the mother of heroes, as she 
is. Her family are her two sons and three daughters, one 
of them a child of three years. One of the sons has been 
in Kansas ; the other was to go with his father this sum- 
mer, but I think his marriage, which took place in April, 
may have prevented it. Owen is noAV with his father, 
and both, I suppose, are in Kansas, for on the 17th of 
July they were beyond Iowa City with their teams. I 
shall have much to tell you about this visit. The sub- 
scription could not have been better bestowed, and the 
small balance, which I paid Mrs. Brown, came very op- 
portunely." 



Concord and North Elba 125 

The final subscription of Mr. Lawrence to this 
fund was $310, that of Mr. Stearns, $260. ISIy 
subscription was my travehng expenses — about 
$50, I think, for I kept no close account. I first 
went to Peterboro, in Madison County, N. Y., the 
birthplace and baronial home of Mr. Smith; fnen, 
after cashing the draft for $1,000 and paying bin:, 
I took the balance for the Thompson brothers, ar' 1 
renewed a visit to Niagara, which I first made t)>^ 
summer before; then went down the Niagara and 
the St. Lawrence to Montreal, passing through the 
Lachine Rapids under the pilotage of the famous 
boatman, Baptiste — and from Montreal wTnt by 
rail to Burlington, as my neighbor Thoreau had 
done seven j^ears before. From Burlington, Vt., 
I steamed up the lake (Champlain) and across it 
to Keeseville, where I landed and went inland to 
Au Sable Forks, to spend the night, and the next 
morning early, hired a "buckboard" (primitive 
one-seated wagon) and drove myself through the 
towns of Wilmington and Jay, and through the 
romantic Wilmington Pass, to the frame house of 
John Brown in North Elba, a few miles east of 
Lake Placjd. It was then not much more than a 
frame, boarded and clapboarded, and much of it 
lathed, but with only two or three plastered rooms. 
It was on the very edge of the forest, and Watson 
and Salmon Brown, when I arrived, were getting 
the logs together and burning them to extend the 
" clearing " which they had " cut off," a httle far- 
ther from the house, along the rude highway. The 
house then sheltered Mrs. Brown and five of her 
children, for Oliver was absent, but not in Connect!- 



126 Recollections of Seventy Years 

cut, where his father had placed him in April. 
Ruth, the only surviving daughter of the first mar- 
riage, was living with her husband, Henry Thomp- 
son, in a smaller house, across the pasture, for which 
I had come to pay his brothers. The women of 
bot^i families were gathering and drying the wild 
red raspberry, then ripening abundantly, so that 
tJ^xCy might make sauce and pies with them in the 
iong, cold winter. 

I was the guest of these worthy people for two 
nights and a day, during which I transacted the 
needful business, heard from Henry Thompson the 
story of his adventures in Kansas, and on the way 
there; and of the fight at Black Jack, where he 
was wounded, and still carried the rifle ball in his 
muscular frame — for it was not extracted till years 
afterward. Ruth Thompson entertained me with 
anecdotes of her father, and with her own cheerful 
and friendly nature. Indeed, the whole family 
seemed to be cheerful in the midst of poverty and 
anxieties, such as few households then felt ; a manly 
and womanly resolution and generosity prevailed, 
characteristic of these remarkable households. 
Henry Thompson wrote out for me, years after, 
the story that he told me in his homestead then, 
and I will insert it here, for I think it has never 
been printed. He was afterward a pioneer in Wis- 
consin, and a citizen of Pasadena in California. He 
was born in New Hampshire, and had the traits of 
that hardy State. The town of Keene, below North 
Elba, on the way to Westport and civilization, was 
named for the New Hampshire Keene, from which 
some of its pioneers had come. 



Concord and North Elba 127 

STATEMENT OF HENRY THOMPSON 

(Formerly of N. Elba, N. Y.) 



Concerning His Kansas Experiences, 1855-56. 

(Dictated to His Daughter, December, 1900.) 
About August 15, 1855, I left North Elba, where I 
had married Ruth Brown, and joined John Brown at 
Hudson, O., where his father was then living. We went 
on a Saturday by boat from Cleveland to Detroit, where 
we stayed over Sunday, and heard Alexander Campbell, 
founder of the Campbellite Christians, preach ; then went 
to Chicago, whither we had sent our freight. There we 
bought a young horse, and packed our freight into a 
" democrat " wagon ; it consisted of firearms, a tent, 
blankets, provisions, surveying tools, etc. My brother- 
in-law, Oliver Brown, joined us at Chicago. Thence we 
started across Illinois in a southwesterly direction, as 
nearly in a straight line as we could, for Rock Island on 
the Mississippi. We crossed the river there, kept our 
course across the southeast corner of Iowa, and struck the 
Missouri River at a little place called Brunswick, in 
Chariton County, Missouri, about midway of the State 
from east to west — now a town of 2,000 people. The 
most conspicuous building there in 1855 was a slave- 
pen. While we waited for a ferry-boat to take us across, 
an old man came out to us, looked us over and asked, 
" Where are you going " Capt. Brown said, " To Kan- 
sas." "Where from.?" "New York." The old man 
said, " You will not live to get there." Brown's reply 
was, " We are prepared not to die alone." The Missou- 
rian seemed to lose interest, and said no more. 

We traveled some days without incident, moving west- 
ward. When we got to Lexington, also on the Missouri, 
we stopped at a hotel to feed our horse and look around 



128 Recollections of Seventy Years 

a little. About a dozen men were in the barroom ; one 
of whom, telling about his going to Kansas that year 
with Gov. Reeder, said that whenever they came to a little 
hamlet the Governor would stop and make a speech ; but 
when they came to Lawrence, he never gave it a passing 
nod ; and they rode away so hard that " they killed a 
me-are and a me-ule." Going out to look the town over, 
we went towards the river, and overtook a gang of slaves 
who were being taken to the river to be sent South. We 
saw them put aboard the steamer for St. Louis. Poor 
fellows, they looked as though " Forced from home and 
all its pleasures." We kept on westward, up the river, to 
a little town called Waverley, in Lafayette County, where 
Jason had buried his little son Austin, Avho died with 
cholera as he and John Brown, Jr., were going to Kan- 
sas the year before. We took up the coffin and carried it 
to where Jason was living, nine miles from Osawatomic. 

As we neared the west border of Missouri, I noticed 
lots of men going westward ; and one day a big crowd 
came along on horses and mules — each man carrying a 
double-barreled shotgun. I said to them, " Boys, where 
are you going? " " To Kansas; there is to be an election 
there next week, and we are going over to vote." " Why 
do you carry your shotguns .'' " " Oh, we might see some 
rattlesnakes, or some abolitionists." 

We kept on about the same west course until we crossed 
the border into Kansas, at a little place, then called (T 
think) Santa Fe, a few miles south of Kansas City. Then 
we changed our course a little to the northwest, crossed 
the Osage River at Stanton, below Osawatomie, and found 
John and Jason with their families, out on the bald prairie 
at " Brown's Station," as John had christened it. We soon 
helped them build winter quarters in the timber. We ar- 
rived October 6, 1855, and had the families sheltered be- 



Concord and North Elba 129 

fore December. Then came on the Wakarusa war. We 
heard the Missourians were coming over to burn Law- 
rence, and the leading men there sent for help. I could 
not go, as I was sick with ague. The rest of our com- 
pany went — John, Owen, Frederick, Salmon, and Oliver, 
with Capt. Brown. 

The Missourians came in sight of Lawrence and halted. 
Capt. Brown wanted to go out and give them battle ; he 
said it would have a good effect to let a little blood. But 
the leading men would not hear of it ; they said it would 
not take well in the East. Thus ended the war in 1855. 

Our company all went to the election at Pottawatomie 
precinct in the fall of 1855 ; all went off quietly. As we 
started back for home, I happened to be in company with 
old man Doyle (afterwards killed near Dutch Henry's) 
and with others. Doyle was talking about the Southern 
slaves ; said they were nothing but brutes ; they did not 
know anything. " Sell husband, wife or children," he 
said ; " they did not care anything about it." I said, 
" Look here, old man ! I've seen colored men as much 
smarter than you are as you are smarter than that little 
dog running along yonder." Doyle replied, " That is in- 
cendiary language, and you will have to pay for it yet." 
So when Judge Cato came along from Lecompton, and 
opened court at Dutch Henry's Crossing, Doyle swore out 
a warrant for my arrest. We heard of it, and concluded 
it would be a good thing for me to go over and give 
myself up — Salmon Brown going with me to carry the 
news back. In case they arrested me, the whole company 
was to come over in the morning, march into the court, 
and hand me a couple of revolvers ; we would then adjourn 
the court summarily. But the court had weakened, Judge 
Cato had gone — and I heard no more about the warrant. 

In the spring of 1856, as soon as the grass got high 



130 Recollections of Seventy Years 

enough for mules to live on, the Missourians started and 
got to Lawrence before we could, and destroyed the Free 
State Hotel. Hearing of this, we turned back and camped 
that night at Ottawa Jones's (the friendly Indian). Cap- 
tain Brown saw that something decisive must be done, 
and called for volunteers. " Further this deponent saith 
not;" Shore and Townsley have told their stories, not 
agreeing in all points. 

The last Sunday in May, 1856, we were at Prairie 
City with Captain Shore and some of his men, when a 
company of Missourians came out to sack the place. As 
they approached, Capt. Shore jumped up and halloed, 
" Sharpe's Rifles ! " The two Missouri leaders were then 
so near they did not dare to turn back, and we captured 
them. The others turned and fled as fast as their beasts 
could carry them. We kept the leaders for a few hours ; 
they said they were good Missourians, and we let them go. 
Soon after, on the 1st of June, word came to us that a 
company of 75 men were out looking for Old Brown. We 
at once started to look for them. But night came on, and 
we had to camp on the prairie. But we started as soon 
as we could see in the morning ; found the INIissourians be- 
fore they had eaten breakfast, and when their supply of 
whiskey had given out (the night before). Consequently 
their courage was very low at the time. Their camp was 
in a ravine by a spring called " Black Jack," at the edge 
of an oak timber. When we got within 200 yards of them 
we commenced firing. When one of them got hit, he 
would go down the ravine, mount his horse, which was 
fastened there, and ride away. After we had been fight- 
ing about three hours, Capt. H. C. Pate, who commanded 
them, sent out a couple of men, before he came himself, 
with a flag of truce. Capt. Brown went out to meet 
them, and asked if either of them was their captain. Being 



Concord and North Elba 131 

answered " No," he said, " I will go down with you and see 
your Captain," who, by that time, was coming out to 
meet Brown. Before going forth. Brown ordered his men 
to follow the ravine down to the enemy's camp. The two 
captains meeting. Brown asked Pate if he had any propo- 
sition to make; who replied, " No, but I wanted to tell 
you I am working under orders of the Government." Cap- 
tain Brown said, " I know exactly what you are. I have 
a proposition to make — and that is, your immediate and 
unconditional surrender." Approaching Pate's men, then 
under a lieutenant, Brockett, the latter said, " I won't sur- 
render till my captain gives the order." Turning to Pate, 
Captain Brown said, " You give the order ! " which he 
made haste to do, as Brown raised his revolver. Thus 
26 pro-slavery men surrendered to nine abolitionists, and 
gave up their weapons. I still have Lieutenant Brockett's 
Sharpe's rifle, and a cartridge box marked " A. A. Coffee." 
But at the surrender I was not present, for I had been 
severely wounded about the middle of the fight. As my 
arm was raised to load my gun, the ball struck my side, 
glanced on a rib, ran under the shoulder-blade, and followed 
down the thick muscle beside the backbone. When taken 
out, long afterward, it was nine inches from where it went 
in. Loss of blood and thirst for water compelled me to 
leave the ground. It was about a mile to the place where 
we had left our horses, and there was water. Going that 
way, I met Frederick Brown on horseback, told him I was 
wounded, and would like to take his horse and ride to 
where there was water. He got off, I got on — and then 
the light went out. I supposed I was about to faint, got 
off, and lay down, and my sight came back. Again I got 
on the horse, with the same result ; whereupon I told Fred 
to take the horse — I would go on foot. Thus I got to 
the water, and took a drink, which revived me very much. 



132 Recollections of Seventy Years 

I filled a bottle with the water, took another horse, and 
rode to Howard Carpenter's, where I stayed two nights ; 
and then went to Capt. Brown's camp, on Ottawa Creek, 
where we had been encamped before the fight. Carpenter 
lived near Prairie City, which has now disappeared as a 
town, being included in the present town of Palmyra. 
O. A. Carpenter was wounded in the fight. My own 
wound is still felt. I am a carpenter, but never after that 
wound could I turn a hand-augur without great pain ; and 
at one time I was laid up for five months, unable to do a 
day's work. My last attack was September, 1900. The 
only relief I get at such times is by blistering. 

Much has been said at times about Governor Robinson, 
now dead. I remember reading a newspaper report of his 
inaugural address as Governor of Kansas, in which he 
said, " If the blood of Dow, of Barber and of Brown is 
not enough to satisfy, more victims must be furnished." 
I also remember a report of the distribution of some 
money sent from Boston to help the Free State cause. 
Of this Captain Brown got $11, and I got $7; but in 
laying claim to damages for property lost in the sack of 
Lawrence, May, 1856, Gov. Robinson put in a bill foi 
$13,000, for furniture said to be loaned by him to the 
Free State Hotel, which was destroyed, and for losses at 
his own house.* 

* In copying the MS. of Henry Thompson, I have added a few 
details to make the statements clearer, and would call attention to 
one or two variations from the historical account. Mr. Thompson 
speaks of the firing at Black Jack as " about an hour." But Owen 
Brown and other eye-witnesses have told me what is stated in my 
book, — that the firing was kept up at intervals from early morning 
till early afternoon. I therefore think Mr. T. meant to say three 
hours, or something of that sort. If only an hour, then he was 
wounded only half an hour after the firing began, — which is im- 
probable. The Mr. Carpenter engaged in the fight is registered by 
John Brown, in a manuscript book which he gave me as " O. A. 
Carpenter." Who was Howard Carpenter? — probably his brother. 
— F. B. S. 



Concord and North Elba 133 

I afterward met Henry Thompson at Put-in- 
■Bay-j where he Hved for a time, near John Brown, 
Jr. His daughter, Mary Thompson, to whom he 
dictated the above account, is a teacher in Pasa- 
dena. I remember her, a blue-eyed child, at Put- 
in-Bay Island, and have much corresponded with 
her and her mother since. Ruth Thompson died 
at Pasedena in 1906. 

Returning to Lake Champlain and Keeseville, I 
stopped at Au Sable Forks the night of August 
14, 1857, and wrote to Captain Brown of my visit 
to his family. He replied, from Tabor, Iowa (Au- 
gust 27), thus: 

" My dear Friend, — Your most welcome letter, from 
Au Sable Forks, is received. I cannot express the grati- 
tude I feel to all the kind friends who contributed towards 
paying for the place at North Elba, after I had bought 
it, as I am thereby relieved from a very great embarrass- 
ment both with Mr. Smith and the young Thompsons ; and 
also comforted with the feeling that my noble-hearted wife 
and daughters will not be driven either to beg or become 
a burden to my poor boys, who have nothing but their 
hands to begin with. I am under special obligation to 
you for going to look after them and cheer them in their 
homely condition. May God reward you all a thousand- 
fold! No language I have can express the satisfaction 
it affords me to feel that I have friends who will take the 
trouble to look after them and know the real condition of 
my family, while I am far away, perhaps never to 
return." 



CHAPTER V 

Virgi7iia and Kansas 

IN western Iowa, BroAvn, in the autumn and 
winter of 1857-58, began to drill his small 
company of men for service either in Kansas, 
Missouri, or Virginia, as Providence might 
direct. He had chosen for his drill-master an Eng- 
lishman, Hugh Forbes, who had been a silk mer- 
chant in Siena before the Garibaldian campaigns 
of 1848-9; had taken part with Garibaldi and 
commanded Italian volunteers under that brilliant 
general. Upon his failure and escape from Italy, 
or soon after, Forbes seems to have left Italy, too, 
and for a time resided in Paris, but afterward came 
over to New York, where he led a shifty life, apart 
from his family, who remained in Paris, while he 
supported himself by giving fencing lessons. There 
Brown found him in the early part of 1857, and 
engaged him, with payment in advance, to go to 
the West and drill his men. Forbes was also to 
publish a manual for irregular soldiers, such as he 
had commanded in Italy, and to write appeals to 
the soldiers of the United States army, inviting 
them to join in an attempt to abolish slavery by 
force, as Stevens had done, in Kansas, after leav- 
ing the army. This part of Brown's plan was not 
communicated to his Boston friends, but was 
known to Gerrit Smith, at whose house Forbes had 

134 




JASON BROWN, 1875 





MRS. RUTH BROWN THOMPSON 

{Eldest daughter of John Brown) 




F. B. SANBORN, ^T 25 



D. W. WILDER, -ET 60 



Virginia and Kansas 135 

visited on his way to join Brown in 1857. Though 
I afterward had reason to correspond with Forbes, 
I never saw him, nor do I regret the fact. With 
plenty of courage, and some other good quaHties, 
he was vainglorious, headstrong, and, in brief, what 
the French term "impossible." When he rejoined 
Garibaldi, in 1860, in the Sicilian and Neapolitan 
campaign, his general was obliged to deprive him 
of all command, so quarrelsome and impracticable 
had he become. Brown had the same experience 
with him two or three years earlier. From the slen- 
der resources of Brown in the sjjring of 1857 (be- 
fore May 1), Forbes drew $600, a good part of 
which he used for the support of his family in 
Paris, and the passage back to France of the 
daughter who had come to New York with him; 
and he delayed setting out for Iowa until July. He 
then went leisurely westward, and was at Peter- 
boro, N. Y., a few weeks before I got there in 
early August, 1857. JNIeantime, Brown was impa- 
tiently expecting him at Tabor. Forbes joined him 
there August 9, while I was arranging the North 
Elba business; and he had quarreled and left him 
early in November, alleging that he, Forbes, and 
not Brown, ought to lead the forces against 
slavery. He began to write abusive letters to 
Charles Sumner, Dr. Howe and to me in Decem- 
ber, to several of which I made answer January 15, 
1858, saying, among other things: 

" I became acquainted with Captain Brown a little more 
than a year ago, and have since been his warm friend and 



136 Recollections of Seventy Years 

admirer. Being a member of the Massachusetts Kansas 
Committee, I interested myself with my colleagues in his 
behalf, and we furnished him with some five thousand dol- 
lars in arms and money. As a temporary member of the 
National Committee (Jan. 24, '57), I procured the pas- 
sage of a resolution appropriating five thousand dollars 
from that committee also, of which, however, only five hun- 
dred dollars has been paid. I also introduced him to a 
public meeting of my townsmen, who raised something for 
him. In the summer I visited Mr. Gerrit Smith, and made 
arrangements with him for the settlement of property 
worth a thousand dollars on the wife and daughter of 
Captain Brown, The money was raised in Boston by the 
men whom you calumniate. I visited the families in the 
wilderness where they live, and arranged the transfer of 
property. Mr. Smith first mentioned your name to me — 
unless it were a member of his family, Mr. Morton. Cap- 
tain Brown had never done so, nor did any one hint to 
me that there was any agreement between you and him 
of the kind you mention. I think I wrote to Brown from 
Peterboro', informing him that you were at Davenport, 
having seen your letter to Mr. Smith announcing that 
fact. On September 14 I received Mr. Smith's letter, 
asking that some money be raised for your family, but 
merely on general grounds. I was pledged to aid and sup- 
port Brown, and could not give money to persons of whom 
I knew little or notliing. Had Brown or yourself in- 
formed me of your agreement, the case would have been 
different. I kept Mr. Smith's draft just a week, return- 
ing it to him September 21 ; it was out of his hands just 
eleven days. Since then, I have had a few letters from 
Brown, and have seen some from you, but have heard 
nothing of any compact. To answer Brown's call for 
' secret service ' money, I procured about six hundred 
dollars to be sent him, which, as he has not yet come into 



Virginia and Kansas 137 

active operations, has probably been sufficient. My prop- 
erty is small — my income this year hardly up to my ex- 
penses; but to carry out the plan which Captain Brown 
has matured, if the time seemed favorable, I would sacri- 
fice both income and property, as he very well knows. 
But it is probable that Captain Brown placed too much 
confidence in the expectations of others, and that he may 
have mistaken hopes for promises. Does he join in your 
vituperation of his Boston friends? I know he does not. 
I can excuse much to one who has so much reason for 
anxiety as you have in the distress of your family." 

Some things in this letter require explanation. 

At this time, none of Brown's New England 
friends, except possibly a few colored men at 
Springfield, had any hint of his Virginia plans. 
At the National Committee meeting of the 
January previous, where Brown was, I represented 
Drs. Cabot and Howe as their proxy, for the ex- 
press purpose of having the National Committee 
return our 200 rifles to the Massachusetts commit- 
tee for Brown's use, to whom we had voted them. 
The meeting did so return them, well knowing that 
we should turn them over to Brown without delay. 
He found them at Tabor in August or September, 
and took possession, meaning then to use them in 
Kansas, and not to sell them. It was with a part 
of these rifles that he entered Virginia in October, 
1859; but none of us knew in January, 1858, that 
such a scheme was in contemplation. 

At this Astor House meeting Brown was closely 
questioned by some of the National Committee, 



138 Recollections of Seventy Years 

particularly by Mr. Hiird, of Chicago, as to what 
he would do with money and arms. He refused to 
pledge himself to use them solely in Kansas, and 
declared that his past record ought to be a suffi- 
cient guarantee that he should employ them judi- 
ciously. If we chose to trust him, well and good, 
but he would neither make pledges nor disclose his 
plans. Mr. Hurd had some inkling that Brown 
^^ ould not confine his w^arfare to Kansas, but the 
rest of us were willing to trust Brown, and the 
money was voted. 

It was probably Forbes's quarrel with Brown 
that hastened his disclosure to us of the Virginia 
plan, in the end of February, 1858, at Gerrit 
Smith's house, after he had communicated it to 
Frederick Douglass at Rochester. The latter had 
heard something of the scheme at Springfield, in 
1847. Of Forbes, Douglass says: 

" After remaining with Brown a short time, he came to 
me in Rochester (Nov., 1857) with a letter from him, ask- 
ing me to receive and assist him. I was not favorably im- 
pressed with Forbes at first; but I ' conquered my preju- 
dices,' took him to a hotel, and paid his board while he 
remained. Just before leaving, he spoke of his family in 
Europe as in destitute circumstances, and of his desire to 
send them some money. I gave him a little, and through 
Miss Ottilia Assing, a German lady deeply interested in 
the John Brown scheme, he was introduced to several of 
my German friends in New York. But he soon wore them 
out by his endless begging; and when he could make no 
more money by professing to advance the project, he 
threatened to expose it and all connected with it. I was 



Virginia and Kansas 139 

the first to be informed of his tactics, and I promptly com- 
municated them to Captain Brown. Through Miss Assing 
I found that Forbes had told Brown's designs to Horace 
Greeley, and to officials at Washington, of which I in- 
formed Brown; and this led to the postponement of the 
enterprise another year. It was hoped that by this delay 
the story of Forbes would be discredited; and this was 
correct — for nobody believed the scoundrel, though he 
told the truth." 

I should scarcely use the word " scoundrel " of 
Forbes, although he did, now and then, the deeds 
of dishonor. Such was his vanity and his lack of 
self-control that what to men of honor seems un- 
pardonable, must have appeared to Forbes quite in 
keeping with his lofty estimate of himself. We 
have seen not a few such instances, and often in 
persons much higher placed than this underbred 
Enghshman. The "officials" whom he saw in 
Washington were anti-slavery Senators, and not 
members of the administration of Buchanan. Dr. 
Howe, writing to Senator Wilson in May, 1858, 
thus described Forbes: 

" There is in Washington a disappointed and malicious 
man, working with all the activity which hate and revenge 
can inspire, to harm Brown, and to cast odium on the 
friends of Kansas in Massachusetts. You probably know 
him. He has been to Mr. Seward. Mr. (John P.) Hale 
also can tell you something about him." 

To Forbes himself, Howe wrote thus, about the 
same time: 



140 Recollections of Seventy Years 

" I infer from your language that you have obtained 
(in confidence) some information respecting an expedition 
which you think to be commendable, provided you could 
manage it, but which you will betray and denounce if 
Brown does not give it up ! You are, sir, the guardian 
of your own honor, but I trust that for your children's 
sake, at least, you will never let your passion lead you 
to a course that might make them blush." 

Forbes himself, rather too late for his own repu- 
tation, seems to have taken the hint of Howe; for 
in October, 1859 (the 25th), he published in the 
New York Heralds to which he had made some 
disclosures, after Brown's arrest, this disclaimer: 

" Some Abolitionists of good judgment insisted strongly 
that I should make Brown desist from his projects, which 
they considered would prove fatal to the anti-slavery 
cause ; and as there were sundry persons in the free States 
interested, copies of most of the letters were furnished to 
each of them and to Brown. I could not myself take all 
the copies, therefore some friends occasionally copied for 
me. I feel sure that none of these letters were suffered to 
be seen by the Secretary of War: first, because I have 
faith in the reliability of those who had them in their 
hands ; and, secondly, because it is absolutely impossible 
that, had such authentic evidence been placed before him, 
he could have been taken so by surprise as he was at 
Harper's Ferry." 

Two days later, October 27, one A. Jones, for 
whom Governor Wise of Virginia vouched as " re- 
liable," wrote to Wise, then investigating the Vir- 
ginia Foray: 



Virgirda and Kansas 141 

" It would be well for jou to Telegraph to M"". Hunter 
the prosecuting attorney at Charlestown to have Hugh 
Forbes, of this city, sumoned to that place as a witness. 
Here he is afraid of the abolitionists. I have no doubt, 
that he can make important disclosures if disposed, and, 
which would fully prove the Treasonable complicity of 
Seward, Sumner ^ others. If assured of perfect protec- 
tion & safety in Va. I think he would disgorge. He is no 
doubt an abolition adventurer of a mean type, but, his 
disclosure might develope other & corroborative testimony, 
compromising Seward and his confederates in treason." 

Soon after this date Forbes disappeared from 
New York, without " disgorging " anything that 
was not by that time pretty well known from other 
sources. His passage to Europe may have been 
paid from the money earned by his disclosures in 
the Herald, which w^as then struggling hard to con- 
nect Seward and Sumner with the plans of Brown. 
On the 28th of October it published editorially 
these remarks: 

" The Forbes correspondence shows the connection of 
Seward with this vile conspiracy against the Union and 
the South. It appears from Colonel Forbes' correspond- 
ence that Mr. Seward was aware of this conspiracy as far 
back as the spring of 1858 ; he knew that an organized 
attempt would be made to create a servile insurrection, to 
overthrow the Union and plunge the country into blood, 
and it was with the full knowledge of this abominable 
scheme before him that he made his brutal speech at Roch- 
ester, declaring for an ' irrepressible conflict ' between the 
North and South. To verify his words, the sanguinary 
conflict opened the other day at Harper's Ferry, and had 



142 Recollections of Seventy Years 

it not been prematurely commenced, and thus rapidly 
crushed, the sentiments enunciated at Rochester would 
have been transformed into deeds in Virginia and Mary- 
land, the probable result of which may well startle the 
entire country." 

But to return to the thread of my story. Being 
addressed by me and others to know what Forbes 
meant by his insulting letters in the early winter of 
1857-8, Brown came eastward from Springdale, in 
Iowa, late in January, 1858, and early in February 
took refuge under the name of " Nelson Haw- 
kins " with Douglass in Rochester, N. Y., paying 
him board for some weeks, at $3 a week. From 
there, February 2, he wrote to Theodore Parker, 
to whom I had introduced Brown thirteen months 
before, and said: 

" I am again out of Kansas, and am at this time con- 
cealing my whereabouts ; but for very different reasons, 
however, from those I had for doing so at Boston last 
spring. I have nearly perfected arrangements for carry- 
ing out an important measure in which the world has a 
deep interest, as well as Kansas ; and only lack from five 
to eight hundred dollars to enable me to do so — the same 
object for which I asked for secret-service money last 
fall. It is my only errand here; and I have written to 
some of our mutual friends in regard to it, but they none 
of them understand my views so well as you do, and I 
cannot explain without their first committing themselves 
more than I know of their doing. I have heard that Par- 
ker Pillsbury and some others in your quarter hold out 
ideas similar to those on which I act ; but I have no per- 
sonal acquaintance with them, and know nothing of their 




{From the last Boston photograph, 18.59) 



Virginia and Kansas 143 

influence or means. Cannot you either by direct or indi- 
rect action do something to further me? Do you not 
know of some parties whom you could induce to give their 
abohtion theories a thoroughly practical shape? I hope 
this will prove to be the last time I shall be driven to 
harass a friend in such a way. Do you think any of my 
Garrisonian friends, either at Boston, Worcester, or any 
other place, can be induced to supply a little ' straw,' if 
I will absolutely make ' bricks ' ? I have written George 
L. Steams, Esq., of Medford, and Mr. F. B. Sanborn, of 
Concord; but I am not informed as to how deeply-dyed 
Abolitionists those friends are, and must beg you to con- 
sider this communication strictly confidential — unless you 
know of parties who will feel and act, and hold their 
peace. I want to bring the thing about during the next 
sixty days." 

This letter was shown to me, and I had received 
one of like tenor, as Higginson and Stearns had. 
At the same time one of our Kansas correspond- 
ents wrote me that Brown had disappeared from 
Kansas and Iowa, and that some thought him in- 
sane. This, combined with the intimations of 
Forbes, led me to imagine that Brown had some 
scheme for an uprising of the slaves — but if so, I 
supposed it might occur on the Kansas border, or 
in some inland part of INIissouri. February 7 my 
classmate Morton wrote me from INIr. Smith's 
house, quoting the substance of Brown's letter to 
Smith. " He thinks he can do with the money 
more than all that has yet been done. He wishes 
to avoid publicity, and so does not come here, and 
will not see his family. This is news — he " expects 



144 Recollections of Seventh/ Years 

to overthrow slavery in a large part of the coun- 
try." Gerrit Smith invited Brown to his Peterboro 
house, and (February 19) Morton wrote me again: 

" John Brown is here, and asks me to say to you he is 
waiting here to see you. If you cannot come within the 
time he named — say the middle of next week — let him 
know by letter enclosed to me, when you can come. He 
says 'tis not possible for him to go East, under the cir- 
cumstances. He would very much like to see you." 

The next day (February 20) Brown wrote to 
his son John thus : 

" I am here with our good friends Gerrit Smith and 
wife, who, I am most happy to tell you, are ready to go in 
for a share in the whole trade. I will say (in the language 
of another), in regard to this most encouraging fact, 
' My soul doth magnify the Lord.' I seem to be almost 
marvelously helped ; and to His name be praise ! I had 
to-day no particular thing to write, other than to let you 
share in my encouragement. . . . (Feb. 22) I have 
still need of all the help I can possibly get, but am greatly 
encouraged in asking for it. Mr. Smith thinks you might 
operate to more advantage in New England, about Bos- 
ton, than by going to Washington — say in the large coun- 
try towns. I think he may be right. Do as you think 
best." 

On the evening of this later date, the 22d, I 
reached Peterboro from Albany, where I had spent 
Sunday, and found Brown there, domesticated and 
enjoying the society of an old officer of Welling- 
ton's army in Spain, Captain Charles Stewart, who 



Virginia and Kansas 145 

had met Brown there in June, 1855, and given $5 
toward arming the Brown family in Kansas. 
Brown had been there since the preceding Thurs- 
day, and had unfolded much of his plans to the 
Smiths. After dinner, and after an hour spent 
with other guests in the parlor, I went with JVIr^ 
Smith, John Brown, and my classmate Morton, to 
the room of Mr. Morton in the third story. Here, 
in the long winter evening that followed. Brown 
unfolded for the first time to me his plans for a 
campaign somewhere in slave territory east of the 
Alleghanies. In an upper chamber of Gerrit 
Smith's villa at Peterboro, where, amid inherited 
acres which he managed with noble generosity, that 
baronial democrat lived and bore his part in our 
struggle for liberty, he unfolded them to me and 
my classmate Morton, of Plymouth; for he had 
already opened them to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, in 
more private conversations, and they had signified 
a general approval. Now he read us the singular 
constitution drawn up by him (in the Frederick 
Douglass house at Rochester) for the government 
of the territory, small or large, which he might res- 
cue by force from slavery, and for the control of 
his own little band. It was an amazing proposition 
— desperate in its character, wholly inadequate in 
its provision of means, and of most uncertain re- 
sult. Such as it was, Brown had set his heart on it 
as the shortest way to restore our slave-cursed re- 
public to the principles of the Declaration of In- 
dependence; and he was ready to die in its execu- 
tion — as he did. 



146 Recollections of Seventy Years 

To begin this hazardous adventure he asked for 
but eight hundred dollars, and would think himself 
rich with a thousand. Being questioned and op- 
posed, he laid before us in detail his methods of or- 
ganization and fortification; of settlement in the 
South, if that were possible, and of retreat through 
the North, if necessary; and his theory of the way 
in which such an invasion would be received in the 
country at large. He desired from his friends a 
patient hearing of his statements, a candid opinion 
concerning his plan, and, if that were favorable, 
then such aid in money and support as we could 
give him. 

We listened until after midnight, proposing ob- 
jections and raising difficulties; but nothing could 
shake the purpose of the old Puritan. Every diffi- 
culty had been foreseen and provided against in 
some manner; the grand difficulty of all — the mani- 
fest hopelessness of undertaking anything so vast 
with such slender means — was met with the text of 
Scripture: " If God be for us, who can be against 
us?" He had made nearly all his arrangements: 
he had so many men enlisted, so many hundred 
weapons; all he now wanted was the small sum of 
money. With that he would open his campaign 
in the spring, and he had no doubt that the enter- 
prise " would payf' as he said. 

We dissuaded him from what we thought cer- 
tain failure; urging all the objections that would 
naturally occur to persons desiring the end he was 
seeking, but distrusting the slender means and the 
unpropitious time. But no argument could prevail 



Virginia and Kansas 14? 

against his fixed purpose; he was determined to 
make the attempt, with many or with few, and he 
left us only the alternatives of betrayal, desertion 
or support. 

On the 23d of February the discussion was re- 
newed, and, as usually happened when he had time 
enough, Captain Brown began to prevail over the 
objections. We saw we must either stand by him 
or leave him to dash himself alone against the for- 
tress he was determined to assault. To withhold 
aid would only delay, not prevent him. As the sun 
was setting over the snowy hills of the region where 
we met, I walked for an hour with Gerrit Smith 
among woods and fields ( then included in his broad 
manor) which his father purchased of the Indians 
and bequeathed to him. Brown was left at home by 
the fire, discussing points of theologj^ with Charles 
Stewart. Mr. Smith restated in his eloquent way 
the daring propositions of Brown, whose import he 
understood fully, and then said in substance : " You 
see how it is; our dear old friend has made up his 
mind to this course, and cannot be turned from it. 
We cannot give him up to die alone ; we must sup- 
port him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for 
him; you must lay the case before your friends in 
Massachusetts, and ask them to do as much. I see 
no other way." I had come to the same conclusion, 
and by the same process of reasoning. It was done 
far more from our regard for the man than from 
hopes of immediate success. But the Lord knows 
His own soldiers, and the far-reaching results of 
Brown's action in Virginia are now well known of all 



148 Recollections of Seventy Years 

men. He struck at American slavery the severest 
blow it had ever received; and his tragic experi- 
ment, though for a few months it seemed to have 
failed, was a great hastening cause of that bloody- 
rebellion in which slavery perished. Brown was 
executed December 2, 1859 ; three years and thirty 
days afterward President Lincoln issued the final 
decree of emancipation; and in a few years from 
the date of Brown's death, not a slave remained in 
bondage, of the four millions for whose redemp- 
tion he had died. Seldom in human history have 
such great effects so rapidly followed magnan- 
imous deeds. 

Brown was an instrument in the hands of Provi- 
dence to uproot and destroy an evil institution 
which had never appeared more boastful, more 
flourishing or more permanent than when, only 
eight years before final emancipation. Brown en- 
tered the broad domain of Kansas, which the slave- 
holders, by force and fraud, were holding as their 
own. " I shall not be forward to think him mis- 
taken in his method," said Thoreau, " who quickest 
succeeds to liberate the slave." Can any method be 
found that could have done that work quicker than 
Brown's? Within six years from his execution 
there was not a slave held in bondage in the United 
States; but for Brown's career it might have been 
sixty years before we reached that result. His 
attack and its consequences showed both North and 
South the gulf on whose brink they were standing. 
The infuriated slave-masters made haste to break 
up the Union, which they saw might ultimately de- 



Virginia and Kansas 149 

stroy their system. Put thus to the test, our mil- 
Uons of the North were not slow to say: "We 
choose union without slavery, even at the cost of in- 
definite bloodshed, to any further union with slave- 
masters and traitors." The ancient belief was again 
justified, that in battle that army must win in 
whose vanguard the first victim devoted himself to 
death. Led on by a foreordination he felt but did 
not understand, Brown gave his life for the cause 
destined to succeed. 

Unlike that French marshal who " spent a long 
life carrying aid to the stronger side," Brown lent 
his good sword to that which seemed the weaker, 
but which had God for its reserve. He was one of 
those rare types, easily passing into the mythical, 
to which belonged David, the shepherd; Tell, the 
mountaineer; Wallace, the outlaw, and Hofer, the 
Tyrolese innkeeper. Born of the people, humble 
of rank and obscure in early life, these men (if 
men they all were) drew toward them the wrath of 
the powerful, the love of the multitude ; they were 
hunted, prisoned, murdered — but every blow struck 
at them only made them dearer to the heart of the 
humble. By these, and not by coteries of scholars 
in their libraries, the fame of heroes is established. 
In heroes, faults are pardoned, crimes forgotten, 
exploits magnified — their life becomes a poem or a 
scripture — they enter on an enviable earthly im- 
mortality. 

From Gerrit Smith's house, the day I departed 
for Boston, Brown wrote me one of those pro- 
phetic letters which so seldom flowed from his pen ; 



150 Recollections of Seventy YearB 

this I have cherished as the most complete evi- 
dence of my friendship and unison with him: 

John Brown to F. B. Sanborn. 

Peterbobo', N. Y., Feb. M, 1858. 

My dear Friend, — Mr. Morton has taken the liberty 
of saying to me that you felt half inclined to make a 
common cause with me. I greatly rejoice at this; for I 
believe when you come to look at the ample field I labor 
in, and the rich harvest which not only this entire country 
but the whole world during the present and future genera- 
tions may reap from its successful cultivation, you will feel 
that you are out of your element until you find you are 
in it, an entire unit. What an inconceivable amount of 
good you might so effect by your counsel, your example, 
your encouragement, your natural and acquired ability 
for active service! And then, how very little we can pos- 
sibly lose! Certainly the cause is enough to live for, if 

not to — for. I have only had this one opportunity, 

in a life of nearly sixty years ; and could I be continued 
ten times as long again, I might not again have another 
equal opportunity. God has honored but comparatively 
a very small part of mankind with any possible chance 
for such mighty and soul-satisfying rewards. But, my 
dear friend, if you should make up your mind to do so, I 
trust it will be wholly from the promptings of your own 
spirit, after having thoroughly counted the cost. I would 
flatter no man into such a measure, if I could do it ever 
so easily. 

I expect nothing but to " endure hardness " ; but I 
expect to effect a mighty conquest, even though it be like 
the last victory of Samson. I felt for a number of years, 
in earlier life, a steady, strong desire to die ; but since I 
saw any prospect of becoming a " reaper " in the great 



Virginia and Kansas 151 

harvest, I have not only felt quite willing to live, but have 
enjoyed life much; and am now rather anxious to live for 
a few years more. 

Your sincere friend, 

John Brown.* 

The money desired by Brown was soon raised 
and placed in his hands, or at his order, but, as has 
been inferred from what I have said about Forbes, 
his threatened disclosures led to a postponement. 
Brown had come to Boston early in March, 1858, 
had there met Parker, Howe, and Stearns, had 
communicated his plans to them with sufficient full- 
ness, but had named no place for "opening the 
mill," as he styled his desperate venture. Neither 
of the three heard Harper's Ferry mentioned; and 
although Brown had casually asked me, at the 
American House in Hanover Street (where he 
then lodged, under the name of I. Smith), what I 
should think of an attack on the arsenal at Har- 
per's Ferry, it did not give me the impression that 
he meant to begin there. I had supposed, and con- 
tinued so to think, that the opening would be made 
much farther from Richmond and Washington. 

* This letter was received soon after my return to Concord. On 
my way through Boston I had communicated to Theodore Parker 
at his house in Exeter Place, the substance of Brown's plan; and 
upon receiving the letter I transmitted it to Parker. He retained 
it, so that it was out of my possession in October, 1859, when I 
destroyed most of the letters of Brown and others which could com- 
promise friends. Some time afterward my letters to Parker came 
back to me, and among them this epistle. That it did not draw 
me into the field as one of Brown's band was because the interests 
of other persons were then too much in my hands and in my 
thoughts to permit a change in my whole course of life. 



152 Recollections of Seventy Years 

On this point his daughter Anne, now Mrs. Adams, 
of PetroHa, Cal., wrote me in 1885: 

" That Father had a number of plans (and of places 
selected) for commencing operations, is now quite evi- 
dent from the testimony of different persons with whom 
he talked. Salmon tells Mother that he at one time talked 
strongly of Baton Rouge — planning to go there and make 
a beginning, and so work his way north. There were very 
few colored men with him, though he spent years in try- 
ing to enlist more. He made the acquaintance of all such 
that he could, both high and low, in the United States and 
in Canada. That was what first took him to North Elba. 
His first and main object in going to Kansas was to find 
men, and an opening or base on which to commence oper- 
ations — or, as he said, ' to see if something would not turn 
up to his advantage.' Yet he had planned to go to Har- 
per's Ferry before he or any of our family had gone to 
Kansas. He told me his plan the winter before they all 
went (1854-5). I was then but eleven years old. He said 
1 was old enough to understand, and that he knew he 
could trust me. Afterward, when a school-girl at N. Elba, 
I remember having a queer feeling if the class in Geog- 
raphy would have to recite the lesson on Virginia. How 
hard it was for me to recite about Harper's Ferry ! I 
felt as if I might in some way betray Father's ' plan,' as 
we always called it. Little did I then think he was train- 
ing me for future usefulness there." 

Brown had communicated his purpose to his 
older children as long before as 1838, as three of 
his sons have personally assured me. Nothing was 
said of it to me by the Adirondac family in 1857; 
but I have reason to surmise that Gerrit Smith had 



Virginia and Kansas 153 

heard of an attack proposed at Harper's Ferry, 
at some time in 1858 or 1859. Be that as it may, 
it was not made known to the rest of us, either by 
him or by Frederick Douglass, who knew of it in 
the summer of '59, if not sooner. On this point 
Anne said, in 1885: 

" There is a missing link that makes Father's move- 
ments late in September and early in October, '59, a mys- 
tery to most of even of his friends. I could, if I thought 
best, supply that link. I do not know how much Owen 
knows or would be willing to tell, if he were asked, why 
Father and John Kagi went to Philadelphia the last of 
September. Father told Watson, Oliver, Kagi and my- 
self; whether he let any one else know, I have no present 
means of finding out." 

She probably had in mind the occasion late in 
September, when certain colored citizens of Phila- 
delphia, who seem to have been raising recruits f oi* 
Brown, wrote this letter to Frederick Douglass, 
urging him to join personally in Brown's foray: 

F. D., Esq. 

Dear Sir, — The undersigned feel it to be of the utmost 
importance that our class be properly represented in a 
convention to come off right away (near) Chambersburg, 
in this State. We think you are the man of all others to 
represent us; and we severally pledge ourselves that in 
case you will come right on we will see your family well 
provided for during your absence, or until your safe 
return to them. Answer to us and to John Henrie, Esq., 
Chambersburg, Penn., at once. We are ready to make 
you a remittance, if you go. We have now quite a num- 



154 Recollections of Seventy Years 

ber of good but not very intelligent representatives col- 
lected. Some of our members are ready to go on with 
you." 

Apparently Douglass did not go to this " con- 
vention," and it is certain that Brown felt some 
dissatisfaction with him on that account. Mrs. 
Adams added to her statement above quoted, " No 
public use should be made of this information dur- 
ing the lifetime of the party who was to blame, or 
who caused the trouble." " It was God," she con- 
cludes, " who thwarted their purposes and substi- 
tuted His own." There were promises of help 
from colored men in the North, represented by 
Douglass, who had long known Brow^n's general 
scheme, by J. W. Loguen of Syracuse, and J. N. 
Gloucester of Brooklyn. Behind them were sup- 
posed to stand Gerrit Smith, and possibly Henry 
Ward Beecher. Whether such promises were seri- 
ously made will perhaps never be known ; they were 
not taken much into account by the New England 
friends of Brown, who provided him with the 
funds and the arms for his adventure. 

The threatened revelations of Hugh Forbes 
found Brown at St. Catharine's, in Canada, organ- 
izing his force under the provisions of his theoretic 
Constitution. He had explained his methods to 
Douglass in 1847, as he did to me at Peterboro in 
1858. They were slightly changed from time to 
time, but they always left an alternative — either 
to encamp and fortify on slaveholding territory, 
but in a mountainous region — or else to make up 
parties of freed slaves and send or lead them to 



Virginia and Kansas 155 

freedom in some Northern State, or in Canada. 
The organization made in Canada was but the 
skeleton of a larger body, which these few who 
bore the titles were to command; but Brown neither 
expected nor desired a large force, nor did he pro- 
pose any general insurrection. He thought the 
slaves would come in, or be brought in with con- 
siderable alacrity, and his theoretical difficulty, in 
which he wanted my aid, was how to control his 
men. The practical difficulty, as the event proved, 
was to bring the slaves in, and the choice of Har- 
per's Ferry as the point of attack made what was 
before desperate enough, now practically impos- 
sible. Brown's men saw this, and remonstrated; 
so did Douglass when informed of the place, and 
so should we all have done, had the place been seri- 
ously suggested to us, as it certainly was not, unless 
possibly to Mr. Smith. 

The prospect of betrayal by Forbes seemed in 
May so threatening that advantage was taken of 
Gerrit Smith's approaching visit to Boston, to sum- 
mon a meeting of the secret committee of six — 
Howe, Parker, Smith, Stearns, Higginson and 
Sanborn — at JNIr. Smith's room in the Revere 
House, May 24, 1858, to consider what ought to 
be done by us. All were present but Higginson, 
and Brown too was absent. Active correspondence 
had preceded this meeting. Smith had written me. 
May 7* " It seems to me that, in these circum- 

* This letter and several of the others mentioned, are now 
thought to be in the Boston Public Library, where Higginson, who 
had preserved them from destruction, has deposited them. 



156 Recollections of Seventy Years 

stances, Brown must go no further, and so I write 
him. I never was convinced of the wisdom of his 
scheme. But as things now stand it would be mad- 
ness to attempt to execute it. Col. Forbes would 
make such an attempt a certain and most dis- 
astrous failure." I had already, after conferring 
with Howe and Stearns, written to Higginson 
(May 5), thus: 

" It looks as if the project must, for the present, be 
deferred, for I find by reading Forbes's epistles to the 
Doctor that he knows the details of the plan, and even 
knows (what very few do) that the Doctor, Mr. Steams, 
and myself are informed of it. How he got this knowl- 
edge is a mystery. He demands that Hawkins be dis- 
missed as agent, and himself or some other be put in 
his place, threatening otherwise to make the business pub- 
lic. Theodore Parker and G. L. Stearns think the plan 
must be deferred till another year ; the Doctor does not 
think so, and I am in doubt, inclining to the opinion of 
the two former." 

Higginson did not take this view, but wrote to 
Parker, May 9: 

" I regard any postponement as simply abandoning the 
project; for if we give it up now, at the command or 
threat of H. F., it will be the same next year. The only 
way is to circumvent the man somehow (if he cannot be 
restrained in his malice). When the thing is well started, 
who cares what he says ? " 

He soon after wrote more fully to Parker, giv- 
ing many arguments against delay. Parker re- 



Virginia and Kansas 157 

plied: "If you knew all we do about 'Colonel' 
Forbes, you would think differently." 

When, about ^lay 20, Mr. Stearns met Brown 
in or near New York, it was arranged that Brown 
should thenceforth hold the 200 rifles as the agent 
of Mr. Stearns (whose property they then had 
been for some time) , and that the State Committee 
should be relieved of responsibility for them. 
When the secret committee met at the Revere 
House, ^lay 24, it had already been decided to 
postpone the attack; the questions remaining were 
whether Brown should go to Kansas at once 
(where the old troubles were breaking out again), 
and assist Montgomery and others, as he soon did — 
and what sum of money should be raised for his 
future use. The five members who met that day 
w^ere united in voting that he should go to Kansas 
at once. A week later (May 31, 1858), Brown 
was in Boston, and there met Higginson, who made 
a record of their conversation at the time. Brown, 
he says, "was full of regret at the Revere House 
decision — to postpone the attack till the spring of 
1859, when Brown was to receive from the secret 
committee $2000 or more; he, meanwhile, to blind 
Forbes by going to Kansas." Higginson adds: 

" On probing Brown, I found that he . . . con- 
sidered delay very discouraging to his thirteen men, and 
to those in Canada. Impossible to begin in the autumn ; 
and he would not lose a day [he finally said] if he had 
three hundred dollars; it would not cost twenty-five dol- 
lars apiece to get his men from Ohio, and that was all 



158 Recollections of Seventy Years 

he needed. The knowledge that Forbes could give of his 
plans would be injurious, for he wished his opponents to 
underrate him ; but still . . . the increased terror 
produced would perhaps counterbalance this, and it would 
not make much difference. If he had the means he would 
not lose a day." 

He complained that some of his Eastern friends 
were not men of action; that they were intimi- 
dated, and magnified the obstacles. Still, it was 
essential that they should not think him reckless, 
he said ; " and as they held the purse, he was power- 
less without them, having spent nearly everything 
received this campaign, on account of delay — a 
month at Chatham, etc." Higginson notes down 
a few days later that Dr. Howe told him Brown 
left Boston, June 3, with five hundred dollars in 
gold, and liberty to retain all the arms, and that 
"he went off in good spirits." He visited North 
Elba, Ohio, and Iowa, on his way to Kansas, and 
finally reached Lawrence, June 25, 1858. 

Some question has been raised, mostly by per- 
sons who never gave money or sympathy to the 
cause of freedom in Kansas, as to the good faith 
of these six gentlemen in consenting to the use of 
Mr. Stearns's rifles anywhere but in Kansas, 
where, in fact, they were no longer needed. These 
critics have forgotten, or never knew, that we had 
personally given at least $20,000 to the cause in 
Kansas; had administered much larger funds 
without fee or reward, generally without even 
charging our traveling expenses to the commit- 



Virginia and Kansas 159 

tee's treasury, and had in this service devoted many 
months' time. We could not doubt that we had a 
good right to use our own money for the support 
of a movement that aimed at the same general re- 
sult, and which time has shown to have been even 
more effective than the freeing of Kansas. Every 
dollar contributed by others than ourselves for the 
cause of Kansas was strictly used by us for that 
cause; and why covild we not use our own contri- 
bution as we saw fit? 

The relation of the Kansas Committee of Massa- 
chusetts to the rifles they had bought in 1856 was 
one thing; that of Mr. Stearns to these arms was 
quite another thing in 1858. He had virtually 
bought back the two hundred rifles from the com- 
mittee, which, though never formally dissolved, and 
still continuir g at intervals to pass votes and write 
letters in its executive committee, had long been 
practically defunct, for the good reason that its 
funds were exhausted. It had supplied the starv- 
ing people of Kansas with wheat and clothing in 
1857; and to do this had advanced money far be- 
yond the amount raised in that year. I remember 
this, because I had myself advanced two or three 
hundred dollars at that time ; but the principal ad- 
vances were made by our chairman, whose liber- 
ality where his heart was interested knew no 
bounds. At the time when his Massachusetts 
friends first heard of the Virginia plans of Brown, 
and gave their reluctant approval, the rifles in 
Brown's possession, though nominally belonging 
to the Massachusetts Kansas Committee, were 



160 Recollections of Seventy Years 

pledged to Mr. Stearns, along with other property, 
for the reimbursement of his advances. I have 
forgotten how many thousand dollars he paid in 
this way, but the value of the arms was not enough 
to reimburse him ; and it was agreed that he should 
not only have these, but should also be at liberty 
to reimburse himself out of the avails of promis- 
sorjT^ notes given by the Kansas farmers in payment 
for the wheat and other supplies which we sent 
in to the poor men. It was for this particular serv- 
ice that my advances were made, in joining with 
Dr. Howe and Mr. Stearns in paying our en- 
dorsements on a note of E. B. Whitman, cashed 
in Kansas for this supply of provisions or seed- 
wheat. 

It was now agreed by the secret committee that 
Brown should not tell us his plans in detail, we 
being willing to trust him with our money, and 
wishing for no report of progress save by action. 
This common wish was thus pithily expressed by 
^Ir. Smith, when he wrote me six weeks after 
Brown had left Boston: 

Peteuboro', July 26, 1858. 
Mr. F. B. Sanborn. 

My dear Sir, — I have your letter of the 23d Instant. 
I have great faith in the wisdom, integrity, and bravery 
of Captain Brown. For several years I have frequently 
given him money toward sustaining him in his contests 
with the slave-power. Whenever he shall embark in an- 
other of these contests I shall again stand ready to help 
him ; and I will begin with giving him a hundred dollars. 
I do not wish to know Captain Brown's plans ; I hope 



Virginia and Kansas 161 

he will keep them to himself. Can you not visit us this 
summer? We shall be very glad to see you. 
With great regard, your friend, 

Gerrit Smith. 

In spite of this understanding, I could not avoid 
some knowledge of the movements and plans of 
Brown, since I was the chief medium of his cor- 
respondence, when he was not in personal com- 
munication with some of us by visits. His forcible 
emancipation of a dozen slaves in western ]Mis- 
souri, in December, 1858, and their safe removal 
to Windsor, in Canada, was well known, and 
caused a price of $3000 to be set on his head. 
Nevertheless, he moved freely about the Northern 
States, and soon showed himself publicly at the 
home of Gerrit Smith. ^ly friend Morton, with 
whom I was in frequent correspondence, from 
1853 to his death at Morges, in Switzerland, in 
1900, wrote me thus from Peterboro in the next 
spring : 

" Wednesday Evening, April 13, 1859. 
"You must hear of Brown's meeting tliis afternoon — 
few in number, but the most interesting I perhaps ever 
saw. Mr. Smith spoke well; G. W. Putnam read a spir- 
ited poem; and Brown was exceedingly interesting, and 
once or twice so eloquent that Mr. Smith and some others 
wept. Some one asked him if he had not better apply him- 
self in another direction, and reminded him of his immi- 
nent peril, and that his life could not be spared. His 
replies were swift and most impressively tremendous. A 
paper was handed about, with the name of Mr. Smith for 
four hundred dollars, to which others added. Mr. Smith, 



162 Recollections of Seventy Tears 

in the most eloquent speech I ever heard from him, said: 
' If I were asked to point out — I will say it in his presence 
— to point out the man in all this world I think most truly 
a Christian, I would point to John Brown.' I was once 
doubtful in my own mind as to Captain Brown's course. 
I now approve it heartily, having given my mind to it 
more of late. 

" April 18. — Brown left on Thursday the 14th, and 
was to be at North Elba to-morrow, the 19th. Thence 
he goes ' in a few days ' to you. [He actually reached 
my house in Concord, Saturday, May 7, and spent half 
his last birthday with me.] He says he must not be trifled 
with, and shall hold Boston and New Haven to their 
word. New Haven advises him to forfeit five hundred 
dollars he has paid on a certain contract, and drop it. 
He will not. From here he went in good spirits, and 
appeared better than ever to us, barring an affection of 
the right side of his head. I hope he will meet hearty 
encouragement elsewhere. Mr. Smith gave him four hun- 
dred dollars, I twenty-five, and we took some ten dollars 
at the little meeting." 

For " New Haven " here read " Collins ville " — 
the contract was for the pikes made in that Con- 
necticut town. 

Quite apart from the sympathy Ibetween one 
descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers and another, 
on the great subject of human freedom, music 
was a tie between Brown and Morton; for both 
were devotedly fond of it, and Morton was a com- 
poser as well as a spirited performer on the piano, 
and one of a large family of vocalists, whom I 
often heard sing in chorus at their waterside cot- 



Virginia and Kansas 163 

tage in Plymouth. When I went to Peterboro in 
February, '58, to meet Brown at Gerrit Smith's, 
and hear his plans, Morton played us some fine 
pieces in the drawing-room after dinner. Among 
others was Schubert's " Serenade," then a favorite 
number; and I saw the old Puritan, who sang a 
good part himself, sit weeping at the air. It re- 
minded me of the bedesman in Keats : 

" Northward he tunieth through a little door, 

And scarce three steps ere music's golden tongue 
Flattered to tears this aged man and poor: 
But, no ; already had his death-bell rung ; 
The joys of all his life were said and sung." 

I had been looking for Brown in Concord for 
some days when a little after noon of Saturday, 
May 7, he appeared at my door (the residence 
now of Miss Mary and Miss Flora White, not far 
from the Fitchburg railroad station) accompanied 
by his faithful henchman, Jeremiah Anderson, of 
Iowa, who was killed at Harper's Ferry. We 
gave notice through the churches, Sunday morn- 
ing, of a meeting that evening, at which Brown 
spoke, and a few persons gave him money. From 
the Journal of Bronson Alcott, I quote passages 
written after the meeting: 

" Concord, May 8, 1859. This evening I hear Captain 
Brown speak at the Town Hall on Kansas affairs, and the 
part taken by him in the late troubles there. He tells his 
story with surpassing simplicity and sense, impressing us 
all deeply by his courage and religious earnestness. Our 



164 Recollections of Seventy Years 

best people listen to his words — Emerson, Thoreau, Judge 
Hoar, my wife; and some of them contribute something 
in aid of his plans without asking particulars, such con- 
fidence does he inspire in his integrity and abilities. He 
is Sanborn's guest, and stays for a day only. A young 
man named Anderson accompanies him. They go armed, 
I am told, and will defend themselves, if necessary. I 
believe they are now on their way to Connecticut and 
farther south ; but the Captain leaves us much in the dark 
concerning his destination and designs for the coming 
months. Yet he does not conceal his hatred of slavery, 
nor his readiness to strike a blow for freedom at the 
proper moment. I think him equal to anything he dares 
— the man to do the deed, if it must be done, and with the 
martyr's temper and purpose. He is of imposing appear- 
ance, personally, — tall, with square shoulders ; eyes of 
deep gray, and couchant, as if ready to spring at the least 
rustling, dauntless yet kindly ; his hair shooting back- 
ward from low down on his forehead; nose trenchant and 
Romanesque; set lips, his voice suppressed yet metallic, 
suggesting deep reserve ; decided mouth ; the countenance 
and frame charged with power throughout. Since here 
last he has added a flowing beard, which gives to the sol- 
dierly air the port of an apostle. Though sixty years old, 
he is agile, and ready for any audacity, in any crisis. I 
think him about the manliest man I have ever seen — the 
type and synonym of the Just." 

Brown told the story of his invasion of Mis- 
souri, and the removal of the slaves; and there 
were good citizens and anti-slavery men in the 
audience who were startled at this practical en- 
forcement of the Golden Rule, as Dr. Howe was, 
a few days later, when he met Brown in Boston. 



Virginia and Kansas 165 

The conversation was reported by Howe in a let- 
ter to Parker at Rome, the next winter. Writing 
to me from Peterboro, June 1, Morton said: "I 
suppose you know the place where this matter is to 
be adjudicated. Harriet Tubman suggested the 
4th of July as a good time to ' raise the mill.' " I 
did not know the place, but Harriet was an old 
friend of mine — a Maryland Sibyl who had not 
only escaped from slavery herself, but had brought 
away a hundred other fugitives. She was intimate 
with the Smiths, with the Sedgwicks, of Syracuse, 
and the Sewards, of Auburn. In fact, it was on 
the anniversary of our national independence that 
Brown appeared in Maryland, on his way to the 
Kennedy Farm; but my only knowledge for 
months was of Chambersburg, where he received 
his recruits and supplies. A few days after this 
note of Morton's, quoting Harriet, Mr. Smith 
himself wrote to Brown at an Ohio address which 
I had sent him. This letter was captured at the 
Kennedy Farm, but so misprinted in the news- 
papers that its puzzling character became still more 
misleading. Correctly printed, it is as follows: 

" Peteeboro', June 4, 1859. 
" Captain John Brown. 

" My dear Friend, — I wrote you a week ago, direct- 
ing my letter to the care of Mr. Stearns. He replied, in- 
forming me that he had forwarded it to Westport ; but as 
Mr. Morton received last evening a letter from Mr. San- 
bom, saying your address would be your son's home — 
namely, West Andover — I therefore write you without 
delay, and direct your letter to your son. I have done 



166 Recollections of Seventy Years 

what I could thus far for Kansas, and what I could to 
keep you at your Kansas work. Losses by indorsement 
and otherwise have brought me under heavy embarrass- 
ment the last two years, but I must, nevertheless, continue 
to do, in order to keep you at your Kansas work. I send 
you herewith my draft for two hundred dollars. Let me 
hear from you on the receipt of this letter. You live in 
our hearts, and our prayer to God is that you may have 
strength to continue in your Kansas work. My wife 
joins me in affectionate regard to you, dear John, whom 
we both hold in very high esteem. I suppose you put the 
Whitman note into Mr. Stearns's hands. It will be a 
great shame if Mr. Whitman does not pay it. What a 
noble man is Mr. Stearns ! How liberally he has contrib- 
uted to keep you in your Kansas work ! " 

To such as could read between the lines, this was 
a disclosure of the whole method of the secret 
committee. No one of them might know at any 
given time where Brown was, but some other of 
the four persons named in the letter would be likely 
to know — George L. Stearns, Edwin Morton, F. 
B. Sanborn, and Mr. Smith himself. The phrase 
" Kansas work " misled none of these persons, who 
all knew that Brown had finally left Kansas and 
was to operate henceforth in the slave States. The 
hundred dollars given by Mr. Smith April 14, 
added to the two hundred named in this letter, and 
the note of E. B. Whitman, of Kansas, which 
Brown received from Mr. Smith, make up five 
hundred and eighty-five dollars, or more than one- 
fifth of the two thousand dollars which he told 
Brown he would help his " Eastern friends " raise. 



Virginia and Kansas 167 

Those friends were Stearns, Howe, Higginson, 
and Sanborn — for Parker was then in Europe, and 
unable to contribute. 

About the date of this letter (June 4, 1859), 
there was a departure from Boston by Brown, of 
which I thus wrote to Higginson: 

" Brown left Boston for Springfield and New York on 
Wednesday morning at 8.30, and Mr. Stearns has prob- 
ably gone to New York to-day, to make final arrange- 
ments for him. Brown means to be on the ground as soon 
as he can, perhaps so as to begin by the 4th of July. 
He could not say where he should be for a few weeks, but 
letters are addressed to him, under cover to his son John, 
Jr., at West Andover, Ohio. This point is not far from 
where Brown will begin, and his son will communicate with 
him. Two of his sons will go with him. He is desirous 
of getting some one to go to Canada, and collect recruits 
for him among the fugitives — with Harriet Tubman or 
alone, as the case may be." 



CHAPTER VI 

Brown at the Kennedy Farm 

IT is quite impossible to say how much money 
was received and expended by Brown in the 
two years (1858-9) when he was actively pro- 
viding for his foray in Virginia; but seldom 
have such momentous results been produced with 
less outlay. Most of the smaller sums received by 
him went through my hands, while the larger 
amounts were paid to him directly by Mr. Stearns 
and other contributors. His secret committee kept 
no records, and its members mostly destroyed their 
letters to each other, after his capture, so that no- 
body need be injured by what had been written. 
But a small part of the correspondence was cap- 
tured at the Kennedy Farm, for Brown had left 
most of his letters at North Elba. 

Mrs. Gerrit Smith wrote to me in January, 1874, 
what I had heard from her son-in-law, Charles 
Miller, in November, 1859: "Immediately after 
the Harper's Ferry affair JNIr. Smith destroyed 
all the letters touching Brown's movements which 
he had received from persons in any degree privy 
to those movements; and he took it for granted 
that his own similar letters to others had been de- 
stroyed." In replying (Jan. 16, 1874), I said: 

" My first proceeding upon hearing of the attack at 

168 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm 169 

Harper's Ferry, was to go over carefully all the papers 
and letters then in my hands, and destroy all that could 
implicate Mr. Smith or other persons. Two months later, 
when Jolin A. Andrew placed in my hands my own letters 
to Brown (with a few from other persons), which Mr. 
Phillips had brought down from North Elba, after the 
funeral there, I went over these also carefully, before I 
left Boston that day, and destroyed what would implicate 
others. But some of the correspondence of 1858-59 had 
lodged with Theodore Parker, and came back to me a 
year or two after his death; this I did not destroy. Col- 
onel Higginson also had retained some of the letters which 
passed through my hands, with copies of many that he 
wrote to me or to Brown, and all these still exist. It is 
likely Mrs. Stearns has documents touching the matter. 
I should doubt if Dr. Howe had many ; but Vice-President 
Wilson told me, some weeks ago, that he had recovered an 
important letter of his own, which in 1859-60 was sup- 
posed to be lost, when it went to Canada or somewhere, 
but has now got home again. It cannot, therefore, be 
assumed that all written evidence in the case is lost." 



In fact, I have since found several of the notes 
which passed between members of the secret com- 
mittee. I have accounts of $750 given by Smith to 
Brown in 1859; ^Ir. Stearns in that year gave him 
more than $1000; and Francis IMerriam gave him 
$600 in gold. Out of a little more than $4000 
paid by the secret committee, or by them known 
to be contributed in aid of the Virginia enterprise, 
at least $3800 was given with a clear knowledge 
of the use to which it would be put ; while the rest 
was given by persons who were willing to trust 



170 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Brown without asking questions. It was Brown's 
custom to write one letter to be read by the half- 
dozen persons, outside of his own family, with 
whom he conmiunicated. This letter commonly 
came to me first; and my custom was to show it to 
Mr. Parker and Dr. Howe, when they were at 
home, then to send it to Mr. Stearns, who some- 
times forwarded it to Higginson or some more 
distant correspondent, and sometimes returned it 
to me. 

Of the small band who went to their fate in Vir- 
ginia with Brown, Colonel Hinton and Dr. Thomas 
Featherstonhaugh have collected and published 
many facts and anecdotes. But I have received, 
from Anne Brown Adams and others, pithy or 
pathetic incidents and traits, that are worth pre- 
serving. I knew personally nearly half of them, 
either before or after the tragedy. Anne Brown 
herself, with her sister-in-law, Martha Brewster, 
the young wife of Oliver Brown, went from the 
Adirondac woods to the Kennedy Farm in July, 
'59, to " keep house " for the party, and Anne has 
written me this: 

" Of all the helpers Father had, none did their work 
better or more faithfully than poor, patient Martha 
Brewster, Oliver's wife. Whatever her hand found to do, 
she did it with her might. ' Oh, why did they not leave 
the Ferry sooner.? ' — this was the tearless cry that came 
like a dry sob from her lips so constantly. I never heard 
her utter one word of complaint at her hard lot, — only 
that pitiful cry. I never saw her shed a tear but once. 
When I held her dead baby for her to take a last look. 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm 171 

two scalding tears dropt on the little face as she bent over 
and kissed it. I believe they were the only tears that 
ever relieved her breaking heart; for she surely died of 
a broken heart — she had no disease. She told me one 
night before the baby was born, ' If I have a child that 
lives, then I am going to try to live and raise it ; but if 
that dies, I am going to die too.' I said, ' Mat, you must 
not die — ^we cannot spare you.' She said, ' If my child 
dies I shall not have any object to live for; why should 
you wish me to live then ? ' " 

She died at Mrs. Brown's house in the winter 
following the tragedy at Harper's Ferry, and I 
was in the house spending the night when her child 
died. She was a fair and gentle person, quite jus- 
tifying what Anne says of her, who thus continues : 

" She died in March, 1860, and had she lived till April 
she would have been married but two years. Married at 
fifteen, she died when she was but seventeen years old ; she 
was a wife, mother and childless widow in less than two 
years. Her little Olive died in February, less than three 
days old. When Oliver married her in 1858, he expected 
to go right away with Father ; and as her parents were 
bitterly opposed to ours, he thought the world would 
allow his wife a shelter with us. That was their reason 
for marrying so young. She was dignified and womanly 
beyond her years. William Thompson (killed at the 
Ferry) used to call her ' Mom's Lady ' ; the reason was, 
he told me, that the first time he ever saw her, a small, 
fair-haired child, on the fence with her sisters, as he was 
going by the house — he asked their names. The others 
told theirs, but she kept still until he asked again, when 
she replied, ' Oh, I am Mom's Lady.' He said, as he told 



172 Recollections of Seventy Years 

the story, ' She is Mom's Lady stilh' She seldom made a 
joke; hfe seemed too serious to her. 

" Martha received a letter from Oliver late in June, and 
early in July we set forth for the Kennedy Farm. In 
coming downstairs, the morning we started, Martha 
sprained her ankle, and fainted with the pain. Every one 
said we would have to wait a few days ; but she said, ' No, 
we will go all the same.' The occasion of our going was 
that Father found he would be obliged to have house- 
keepers, to ward off suspicion, after he rented the Farm; 
so he sent OHver back for us. When we reached the hotel 
at Harper's Ferry, it was a little before dinner, and 
Father had just gone with a load of things up to the 
Farm, five miles off. So, after dinner, Oliver footed it 
up there, and Father came back after us about sundown. 

" Our nearest neighbors were a family who had rented 
the garden that was just behind our house — so they had 
a good excuse for coming at all times to look at the 
garden — and at us. Little Mother HufFmaster and her 
brood of three little girls (the oldest seven years old) 
and a big boy baby — all barefooted, little Mother and all 
— had a troublesome way of calling on us at all hours of 
the day. Sometimes she would appear when the men — 
' Invisibles,' I called them — were downstairs at their meals. 
I would tell them, shut the door, and stand on the porch 
to keep her out as long as I could, finding some excuse; 
while Martha would put things out of sight, in the kitchen, 
and the men would all go upstairs again — taking the 
victuals, dishes, table-cloth and all with them. This would 
all be done without so much noise as the rattling of a 
spoon. It happened quite frequently ; but we did not dare 
to off'end her, however troublesome, for fear she would tell 
what she saw. So I would give her things, to keep her 
friendly. 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm 173 

" One day, as I was clearing away the dinner, I drew 
a long sigh. Father said, ' What is the matter, Annie? 
Are you homesick ? ' With my usual lack of tact and good 
sense I blurted out, ' Yes — homesick and sick of living this 
life, where I have to live a He — going by another name, 
and telling so many lies — or, what is the same, acting 
them. I wish you would hurry and get through with me, 
and let me go home, where I can be myself and have my 
own name again.' Father dropt his head, and a pained 
look came over his face; when Whipple (Stevens), who 
could always think of the right thing to say or do, at the 
right time and place, came to the rescue by saying, ' Annie, 
let me give you a piece of advice: Always tell the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; but if ever you 
do have to tell a lie, tell a whopper.' The laugh that fol- 
lowed this took the sting out of my hateful speech, and 
put all of us in good humor. 

" I am glad to say that I did not often indulge my- 
self in making remarks so painful as this must have been 
to my Father. He use to encourage us to argue and 
discuss questions with him, either to amuse himself or to 
find out our opinions on certain subjects. One day he 
and Oliver were discussing the Woman Question — Oliver 
contending that women generally were not so intelligent 
and smart as men. Father replied, ' I think my girls are 
quite as smart and intelligent as my boys. Ruth can 
write a letter quite as good, and perhaps better, than any 
of her brothers ; and Anne here succeeds quite well in 
holding her own in a dispute with any of you boys.' As 
disputing was my ruling passion, all agreed, with a laugh 
at my expense that settled the question. 

" In our housekeeping Martha divided the work, giv- 
ing me what she thought I could do best. As she prided 
herself on being one year older, and for that reason hav- 



174 Recollections of Seventy Years 

ing had more experience, she reserved some of the par- 
ticularly nice work, like ironing fine shirts and making 
light bread, for herself to do. Once when I told her that, 
on account of the boys helping me with the dishes and 
the coarse ironing (which was my part), I did not think 
I was doing my share; and if she would teach me how, I 
offered to help iron the fine shirts and make bread. ' No,' 
she said, ' I would rather iron them myself. As for the 
light bread — you can make better corn-bread and Father's 
shortcakes (he taught me how to make those) than I can; 
but I seem to succeed better with the light bread than 
you. So we will each make our own kind. I never will 
attempt to make the shortcake — and if you helped on the 
bread, then you would be doing more than your share.' 

" One day Father came home from a neighbor's where 
he had performed some kind of a surgical operation 
(lanced a wen on the neck of a woman, I think) ; the peo- 
ple gave him a dog. He was either a mixture of all 
breeds, or else of no breed at all — the ugliest brute I ever 
saw. I called out, as he came leading it into the yard, 
' Oh, what are you going to do with that horrid dog? ' 
' Why, I thought we needed a dog to bark nights, if any 
one came here and wanted to get in ; and I meant to get 
one anyway.' I said, ' Can't you carry out your " Plan " 
(we always spoke of the intended attack as " Father's 
Plan") without the help of that miserable, ugly pup?' 
He laughed and said, ' No, I do not think I can,' while 
he tied the dog in the smoke-house. He then told me that 
the boy who gave it to him said his name was ' CufFee ' ; 
and he hoped I would not let my prejudice against it make 
me unkind, ' for you don't know what a good dog he 
may turn out to be.' Presently it howled dismally at 
being tied up, and I called out, ' Father, your baby is 
crying.' Then he told me he wished I would take some- 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm 175 

thing down to him and feed him, and so make friends with 
CufFee. I confess I felt a repugnance towards the ugly 
pup ; but it afterward repaid me by its strong attach- 
ment and doggish love, for all the kindness I ever be- 
stowed on it. 

" I am not telling these little stories because I thought 
they had any bearing in particular on the work that was 
to follow ; but only to convince those who believe that 
John Brown was a crazy fanatic, stem and revengeful, 
and his followers a set of cutthroats and land-pirates, or 
wild adventurers, at least. They were, instead, a good- 
natured, mild-mannered set of men, with hearts tender and 
gentle as a woman's — believing in the Golden Rule, taking 
that for a text, and preaching a practical sermon to the 
world. They spent their time, while shut up in the house, 
in reading, singing, playing games, telling stories and 
helping Martha and me about the work. In their fun and 
play they were as innocent and as easily pleased as a 
lot of children ; but when the great trial of strength came, 
we found them all brave and unflinching, 

" I see that Owen has told you of the trouble and dis- 
satisfaction among the men, and about Kagi's coming 
down from Chambersburg to help settle it. After break- 
fast that morning Father told me to leave my work until 
after the wagon started back to Chambersburg, and to 
stay on the porch ' on guard ' ; for the men had all gone 
upstairs. After a while Kagi came down into the dining- 
room and said, ' He had to wait a few minutes for Watson 
to get ready, and would like, if I had no objection, to sit 
down there and talk with me.' I told him he might, if he 
would keep in the dining-room far enough to be out of 
sight, and would run if I told him ; that I was on guard, 
and had strict orders not to let him be seen. He made 
some remark about its being very odd for so young a 



176 Recollections of Seventy Years 

girl to be standing guard, in such a place and for such a 
purpose. 

" I told him that was my business nearly all the time. 
When I had to go in the kitchen to help Martha, then 
some of the men watched. He seemed quite surprised when 
he found that I understood all Father's plans. Among 
other things I remember asking him what he thought of 
Fred Douglass's refusal to come down with us. He said 
he did not blame Douglass, for ' he is physically inca- 
pable of running ' ; that he had some disease in his feet 
and limbs that made it impossible for him to run. ' If he 
had always lived on such plain food as you have here, he 
would be in a better condition to go. Besides, if Doug- 
lass were caught it would be sure death to him, for he had 
been a slave in Maryland.' 

" Kagi did not seem to take a thought of the risk he 
was running in coming down among us. His relatives 
all lived near Harper's Ferry ; he was raised thereabout, 
and whenever he went home on a visit he used to ' run off ' 
a slave or two belonging to his relatives, until he had 
helped away five or six. Then his friends informed him 
that if he ever came back again, they would lynch him. 
In proof of this fact Oliver told me this story : 

" When, about July 4th, Father, Kagi, Anderson, Owen 
and Oliver first went down to the Ferry, they stopped at 
a little place called Sandy Hook, not far from the Ferry. 
There part of them boarded until after Oliver came back 
with Martha and me. One day Oliver and Kagi were 
sitting outside the hotel there, talking. A man coming 
along asked Oliver to take a turn with him, and then in- 
quired if he knew the man he was talking with. Oliver 
said ' No ' — he was a stranger who had got off the cars 
and was talking to him. ' Well,' said the man, ' he looks 
like John Kagi, and I believe it is he.' Oliver told Kagi 



Brown at the Kennedy Parm IT'f 

as soon as he could get a chance unobserved, and it was 
decided that he had better go back at once to Chambers- 
burg. Kagi was a tall, fine-looking man, pleasant and 
gentlemanly in his manners ; and yet as earnest and en- 
thusiastic in the ' cause ' as Father himself was. I never 
saw him but that once, and afterward, when we met in the 
Harrisburg depot, and I bade him and Father good-bye. 
He had a remarkable memory. When a boy he would 
commit from three to five hundred verses of the Bible in 
an incredibly short time, and repeat them at Sabbath- 
school— receiving prizes for so doing. He could read 
several pages of a book over twice, close the book, and 
at once repeat them almost word for word. He also wrote 
a fine clerkly hand. 

" My association with the men at Kennedy Farm was 
necessarily very intimate, as I had the entire charge of 
the dining-room, and the stairway came down into that 
room, where they were allowed to come whenever we did 
not have company— which we seldom had. I waited upon 
them, watched and cared for them; and I must say that 
they would compare favorably with men in any station of 
life that I have ever met. They did not impress me as 
' men who could do bloody deeds— the bloodier the better,' 
as was said at a public meeting; but as men who were 
earnest and true, kind and generous, warm-hearted and 
sympathetic ; neither saints nor the worst of sinners. They 
nearly all seemed to be impressed with the idea that they 
were going to their death; one, Stewart Taylor, described 
his death to me. He was a very peculiar person, a firm 
behever in Spiritualism; so was Stevens also; but their 
belief was more in theory than in practice. One who es- 
caped told me of their march down to Harper's Ferry, on 
the night of October 16. They went along an old, de- 
serted road on the top of the mountain. He said ' they 



178 Recollections of Seventy Years 

all felt like they were marching to their own funeral.' 
But still not a man faltered, though most of them had left 
near and dear friends to go down there. I am often asked 
why they did this ? I can only say, They loved their coun- 
try better than themselves. Their only success lies in the 
effect produced on the American people, who were thus 
prepared for what was so soon to follow." 

Of the twenty- two men who actually composed 
Brown's company at the Kennedy Farm (for 
John Anderson, a colored recruit, never reached 
there), I met ten, first and last, and Anne Brown 
was in 1860 a pupil of mine at Concord. What 
she says of them is no exaggeration; they were 
mostly young men of excellent principles and gen- 
tle character, and several of them of much ability 
and promise. Of the two Andersons, J. G. (a Wis- 
consin man by birth, but a resident afterward of 
Iowa and Kansas), was once a guest of mine; the 
other, a dark mulatto, Osborne P. Anderson, came 
to see me in Boston long after the foray, in 1872, 
shortly before his death. Of him Mrs. Adams 
says: 

" Did you know of the shameful way the majority of 
the colored people treated Osborne Anderson, the only 
colored man who escaped? He told me with tears in his 
eyes and voice that, while escaping through Pennsylvania, 
his own father turned him from the door, threatening to 
have ^im arrested if he ever came again ; and that most 
of the colored people he met turned the cold shoulder to 
him as if he was an outcast. Dangerfield Newby, except 
Green, the only other colored man I knew (for Coleman 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm 179 

and Leary went down after I came away) was the son of 
a Scotchman, and was born and raised not far from the 
Ferry. His father took the mother and children to Ohio 
and hberated them. Newby seemed a good-natured, sen- 
sible old man. He had a wife and several children that 
were slaves, and he was impatient to have operations com- 
menced, for he was anxious to get them. Green was a 
perfect rattlebrain in talk; he used to annoy me very 
much, coming downstairs so often. He came near betray- 
ing and upsetting the whole business, by his careless let- 
ting a neighbor woman see him, when she came to the 
house one day. I had to do a great deal of talking and 
some bribing to hush her up. 

"The idea of capturing Col. Lewis Washington and 

the General Washington arms originated with John E. 

Cook. Poor man! it is best to cover his sins with the 

mantle of charity. Perhaps we may say of him what I 

used to hear Brother Watson say of any one whom he 

heard accused of wrong motives—' Oh, probably he meant 

well, but had a poor way of showing it.' There was an 

old song called ' Faded Flowers,' a great favorite with 

Tidd and Stevens, which they used to sing almost every 

day at Kennedy Farm. Tidd sang the air, and Stevens 

a peculiarly fine, soft bass. He was a bugler in the army 

during the Mexican War ; and I heard Father say one 

day, after listening to him singing upstairs, ' He must 

have caught those notes from his bugle.' ' Nearer My 

God to Thee ' was also often sung ; and still another song 



was, 



' I know that the angels are whispering to thee.' 

One of their songs I tried in vain to find years afterward, 
or to hear of somebody who had ever heard it; but when 
I read Scott's ' Lady of the Lake ' I discovered it— the 



180 Recollections of Seventy Years 

boat-song of triumph chanted by the clansmen of Ro- 
derick Dhu: 

' Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances ! 
Honored and blest be the evergreen Pine! 
Long may the tree in his banner that glances 
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line ! ' " 

The contrast between the triumph of the High- 
landers and the failure of the foray of Brown 
and his men must have been pathetic to poor Anne 
and her bereaved kindred in the pine forest of the 
Adirondacs. She goes on: 

" The night before we started from Kennedy Farm for 
North Elba, they sang ' Home Again ' for us. We left on 
the morning of September 29. Watson took Oliver, 
Martha and me in the Httle wagon up to Chambersburg. 
Oliver came on as far as Troy, N. Y., where we stayed 
over Sunday. Monday morning he put us on the train 
for Whitehall, and then he started back to Kennedy Farm 
— and death. Watson waited at Chambersburg for Father 
and Kagi, whom we met while changing cars in the Harris- 
burg depot ; they were returning from Philadelphia. 
Father had planned that we should meet there, and told 
Watson, when he sent him down after us, that if nothing 
happened to prevent, we would all meet there. It was 
the last time I ever saw Father. I never looked at him 
after he was brought home; preferred to remember him 
just as we parted. 

" While we were on the road to Chambersburg, driving 
along the great Turnpike on the way to Hagerstown, a 
man rode rapidly towards us from another road, as if he 
had been waiting for the wagon to appear — at least we 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm l8l 

thought so, and that he might be a 'patrol.' He passed 
by, and then, wheeling around, came up with Watson, 
who was then riding behind us. They had a horse and a 
mule, and took turns riding and driving — changing the 
animals on the road. The man rode alongside of Watson 
for some distance, asking all manner of questions about 
his business. He said, 'What do you carry in there?' 
drawing the cover aside and looking into the back of the 
wagon. Watson replied, ' I have two girls in there now.' 
The man made a pohte bow, and said, ' Excuse me, ladies, 
— I did not know you were in there.' He then repeated 
his question, ' What do you carry in that wagon ? — you 
drive by here so often — is it wool.? ' To this last abrupt 
question, Watson, for want of a better answer, said ' Yes.' 
He soon left us, going off as he came, on a side road. We 
were alarmed for fear of being arrested ; but nothing came 
of it. When the man was out of sight Watson said, ' I 
guess he would have been surprised if he had found out 
that all the wool I ever carried in this wagon was on the 
heads of negroes.' He meant that the colored recruits 
were so brought down from Chambersburg by night." 

Commenting on Dr. Howe's conversation with 
John Brown in the summer of 1859, censuring him 
for taking the horses and other property of the 
Missouri slaveholders, whose human property he 
carried away to freedom in Canada, Mrs. Adams 
writes me: 

" It was after Father had become weary and even dis- 
couraged with begging for money and men to carry out 
his Plan, that he made up his mind to confiscate property 
that the slave or his ancestors had been compelled to earn 
for others — property that he needed to subsist on, and to 



182 Recollections of Seventy Years 

enable him to free himself and others. He would have 
scorned even the idea of making any other personal use 
of such property than while he was engaged in working 
in their behalf. Dr. Howe and Father were both right — 
only they viewed the situation from different points. At 
a former time, when Dr. Howe was parting from Father, 
he gave him a little walnut box with a fine Smith & Wesson 
revolver in it. Father gave me the box, and I have it still. 
Now in tliis gift, Dr. Howe fully expected Captain Brown 
to break the law against carrying concealed weapons — 
and possibly the Commandment, ' Thou shalt not kill ' — if 
he was attacked." 

It was before the return of the young house- 
keepers to North Elba that the scene occurred be- 
tween Brown and his men, when they protested 
against going to their death in an attack on Har- 
per's Ferry. Owen Brown, with whom I have 
talked whole days at his island retreat in Lake 
Erie, before he migrated to California, gave me 
this statement concerning that matter. Qwen's 
memory was as wonderfully exact as that of any 
person I have known, and when he repeated 
any anecdote, I always found it was in the same 
form. He said: 

" In the early part of September Father and I went 
with the horse and wagon from the Kennedy Farm to 
Chambersburg — and at different times after in September 
and October — to see if any express packages (colored vol- 
unteers) had arrived. We had many earnest discussions 
as to the feasibility of making the attack at Harper's 
Ferry — which plan was not known to any of us until after 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm 183 

our arrival at the Kennedy Farm. All of our men, except 
Merriam, Kagi, Shields Green, and the colored men (the 
latter knowing nothing of Harper's Ferry), were opposed 
to striking the first blow there. During our talk on the 
road, I said to Father : ' You know how it resulted with 
Napoleon when he rejected advice in regard to marching 
with his army to Moscow. I believe that in your anxiety 
to see that all is going on well at the three different points 
proposed to be taken (the Arsenal, the Rifle- works, and 
the Magazine), you will so expose yourself as to lose your 
life.' He said, finally, ' I feel so depressed on account 
of the opposition of the men, that at times I am almost 
willing to temporarily abandon the undertaking.' I re- 
plied, ' We have gone too far for that — we must go ahead.' 
In the course of our talk he said to me, as he had many 
times to his men before, ' We have here only one life to 
live, and once to die; and if we lose our lives it will per- 
haps do more for the cause than our lives could be worth 
in any other way.' As we found no express packages at 
Chambersburg, he remained there with Kagi, and I went 
back alone. In a day or two both returned to the Ken- 
nedy Farm ; the next morning he called all his men to- 
gether in the chamber of the house, and said to them, ' I 
am not so strenuous about carrying out any of my par- 
ticular plans as to do knowingly that which might prob- 
ably result in an injury to the cause for which we are 
struggling;' and he repeated what he had said to me 
about our losing our lives. He then added, ' As you are 
all opposed to the plan of attacking here, I will resign; 
we will choose another leader, and I will faithfully obey, 
reserving to myself the privilege of giving counsel and 
advice where I think a better course could be adopted.' 
He did then resign. I first replied that I did not know 
of any one to choose as a leader in preference to him. 



184 Recollections of Seventy Years 

In a short time, probably within five minutes, he was 
again chosen as the leader." 



Some of the company afterward became recon- 
ciled to the desperate attack; but most of them, as 
they marched down the misty mountain road from 
the Farm to the Ferry, felt that they were going 
to their death. Not so Jeremiah Anderson, who 
wrote to his Iowa brother, late in September, in a 
confident tone, and with expressions which show 
that no large force of the liberators was expected. 
The original date for the attack was fixed for about 
October 25; but it was hastened from local sus- 
picions that the nature of the party at the Farm 
was other than it seemed. Anderson wrote : 

" Our mining company will consist of between twenty- 
five and thirty, well equipped with tools. You can tell 
Uncle Dan it will be impossible for me to visit him before 
next spring. If my life is spared, I will be tired of work 
by that time, and I shall visit my relatives and friends 
in Iowa, if I can get leave of absence. At present, I am 
bound by all that is honorable to continue in the course. 
We go in to win, at all hazards. So if you should hear 
of a failure, it will be after a desperate struggle, and 
loss of capital on both sides. But that is the last of our 
thoughts. Everytliing seems to work to our hands, and 
victory will surely perch upon our banner. The old man 
has had this operation in view for twenty years ; and last 
winter was just a hint and trial of what could be done. 
I expect (when I start again traveling) to start at this 
place and go through the State of Virginia, and on south, 



Brown at the Kennedy Farm 185 

just as circumstances require; mining and prospecting, 
and carrying the ore with us." 

For half a day Brown and his seventeen men^ 
five being left as guards on the Maryland side of 
the Potomac— held the little town at the Ferry, 
with its important government arsenal, at his 
mercy, and had several captured hostages for pris- 
oners. He and his band might then, possibly, have 
escaped, and, by virtue of the alarm they excited, 
might have retired in comparative safety. But for 
some reason never fully explained, Brown lin- 
gered till escape was impossible; and it was the 
design and expectation of those who captured him 
in the little engine-house, to kill him on the bloody 
floor, to which a lieutenant of marines struck him 
down, and continued to wound him after he fell. 
Heaven had other designs, and he survived to hold 
a historic colloquy with the enraged Virginians, 
which converted millions to Brown's cause, and de- 
prived the victors of the fruit of their success. 
His trial and execution added to the effect of his 
words, and his letters from the Charlestown prison 
completed his Apologia pro vita sua. On this I 
will not dwell; his biographies are numbered by 
tens, and his career gave w^orld-wide vogue to a 
war-song in the long contest that ensued. It soon 
became evident to the world that his fate was just 
that which he had anticipated in his letter to me of 
February 24, 1858: 'I expect nothifig hut to en- 
dure hardness; hut I expect to effect a mighty 



186 Recollections of Seventy Years 

conquest^ even though it he like the last victory of 

Samson/^ 

Samson hath quit himself 

Like Samson, and heroically hath finished 

A life heroic ; honor hath left, and freedom, — 

And, which is best and happiest yet, all this 

With God not parted from him, as was feared, 

But favoring and assisting to the end. 

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 

Or knock the breast, — no weakness, no contempt, 

Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair, 

And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 



l-i 



i: 




r--/ 






CHAPTER VII 

The Harper's Ferry Alarm 

THE attack on Harper's Ferry by John 
Brown and his seventeen men, October 
16, 1859, and his subsequent capture by 
the United States marines under Colonel 
Robert Lee (afterward the Confederate ^eneral- 
in-chief), were telegraphed to a startled world the 
next day or two, and reached me in my quiet 
schoolrooms at Concord on Tuesday morning. Ar- 
rangements had been made for the annual chest- 
nutting excursion of my pupils and others, to the 
Estabrook woods on the old Carlisle road, for the 
whole day of Thursday. The interval gave me the 
information that an indefinite number of my let- 
ters, with those of Gerrit Smith, Dr. Howe, and 
others, had been captured at the Kennedy Farm; 
and nobody knew to what extent the records of our 
conspiracy were in the hands of the slaveholding 
authorities, headed by Senator Mason and Gov- 
ernor Wise. Time was also given me to decide 
what course immediately to take, and to consult 
with ;Mr. Stearns, Dr. Howe and Wendell Phillips. 
I therefore spent hours, Tuesday and Wednesday 
nights, searching my papers to destroy such as 
might compromise other persons ; and on Thursday 
morning, after sending the pupils under competent 

187 



188 Recollections of Seventy Years 

teachers to the picnic, I took a chaise and drove 
across the country to the villa of Mr. Stearns in 
Medford. With him in my company I drove into 
Boston to consult John A. Andrew, an eminent 
counsel, well known to Stearns, Phillips and my- 
self, as to the proper course to be taken, if we were 
liable to arrest in Massachusetts, either as wit- 
nesses or conspirators. Threats of that sort began 
to be made in the pro-slavery newspapers of New 
York, particularly the Herald, then commonly 
known as "the Satanic Press"; and we put our 
case before our friend Andrew, without stating to 
him the full particulars of our complicity with 
Brown. It being the opinion of Mr. Andrew, as 
expressed on Thursday, October 20, that we might 
be suddenly and secretly arrested and hurried out 
of the protection of Massachusetts law; and it 
seeming to me very important that the really small 
extent of our movement should be concealed, and 
its reach and character exaggerated, I went to 
Boston prepared to go that night on the route 
through Maine to Canada. After leaving An- 
drew's office, therefore, I took my slight luggage 
on board the steamboat for Portland, leaving let- 
ters and instructions with my sister Sarah, who 
was then my housekeeper at Concord, for her ac- 
tion in case I should find it expedient not to return 
home after a few days. The whole matter was so 
uncertain, and the action to be taken by the na- 
tional authorities, and by the mass of the people, 
was so much in the dark, that it was impossible to 
say what might be the best course. I reached 





F. B. SANBORN, 1860, yET 28 
{From a crayon by 3Iiss H. Cheney) 



EDWIN MORTON, 1885 





HARRIET TUBMAN, 

{A Fugitive Slave) 



COL. JAMES MONTGOMERY 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 189 

Quebec from Portland toward evening of Friday, 
the 21st, and that very afternoon Wendell Phillips 
wrote me the following note from Boston, which 
I did not receive for several days: 

" My dear Friend : 

" I write more especially to inclose a copy of the con- 
clusion to which John A. Andrew came, after looking up 
the law for our friend George Stearns. You see he 
thinks that parties who have m Massachusetts given aid 
to a treasonable act consummated in Virginia, would, if 
indicted, be tried in Massachusetts. This is different 
from the opinion he gave us in the afternoon [Thursday] 
and on which you based your action. I send you his 
exact words, and the whole of his paper, that you may 
have the whole before you — to see whether you will now 
change your plan and return. I have marked, at the 
close, the paragraph specially interesting to you. 

John A. Andrew's Opi/nion (Oct. 21, 1859) 
" ' In order to constitute the offence of " levying war," 
there must be more than a mere conspiracy to do it: some 
overt act of war must be committed. 

" ' In order to constitute guilt (in any given person) 
of the overt act, he must be present at its commission. 
But he may be constructively present, though actually 
absent ; that is to say, he may be remote from the prin- 
cipal scene of action, but performing some auxiliary or 
ancillary act, — such as keeping watch for the immediate 
actors, guarding them against surprise, having at hand 
for them means of escape, or the like ; thus performing 
a part in that which constituted the overt act, or was 
immediately ancillary thereto. 

" ' But a man cannot be held guilty of an overt act of 



190 Recollections of Seventy Years 

levying war, who was not present at the overt act of war ; 
who participated in none of the transactions of the prin- 
cipal actors at the scene and did not, in any manner, 
render assistance, or attempt to do it, or put himself in a 
position where he might do so, if occasion offered at the 
time, nor perform any part in pursuance and in aid of 
the ends of the principal actors, anywhere, at the time of 
the overt act being committed. 

" ' Still, if one joins in a conspiracy to levy war, and 
war is, afterwards, in fact levied, and he perform any 
act, which in the case of a felony, would render one an 
accessory, he thereby renders himself a principal to the 
treason, since, in treason all who are guilty at all are 
principals. Thus — if he gives arms, ammunition, horses 
or what not, to aid the war, pursuant to the conspiracy, 
such acts, when the war has been actually levied, will 
doubtless be deemed overt acts of treason, in themselves ; 
but the party committing them can only be tried in the 
District where they were committed. A man who gave a 
cannon in Maine to the service of the cause of treason 
could not be tried for it in Texas, merely because it was 
in Texas, that other men, afterwards, fired it. But I 
think it would be regarded as of itself an act of treason, 
the war having been actually levied by other principal 
conspirators, for which he might be tried in Maine.' 

" I asked J. A. A., ' Shall I write him that you think 
he had better return ? ' He replied, ' Send him what I 
have written, and let him decide for himself.' 

" You know better than we what the precise contents 
of your letters were, and so can better judge; but, as you 
could not be carried hence as a witness, nor, if Andrew 
be correct, as an alleged criminal, you may think things 
are so changed that you'll return. 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 191 

" George Stearns went to-day to see Emerson at Con- 
cord. They have kept the school going, and it will go 
ahead for a fortnight or more, awaiting your return. 
Emerson seemed, from what Stearns told me, to think you 
had done wisely in leaving. 

" No news to-day. The young one we talked about * 
probably was there. Our friend who received telegrams 
has received one actor from the scene. The young Brown, 
whom we all saw last summer, is not dead. He was not 
there; letters have been received since from him; nothing 
in them important. Old man will probably recover, and 
I live in hope we'll see him again yet. Be sure we'll leave 
no stone unturned. 

" If you write home while you deem it best to stay 
away, send your letters under cover to me, and tell them 
to send to me any letters for you, that I may mail them 
hence. It would not do to mail to you, even under an 
assumed name, or receive from you through a village post 
office." 

(No signature.) 

On Saturday, October 22, Phillips wrote me 
again, thus: 

* This " young one " was Francis Jackson's grandson, Frank Mer- 
riam, who escaped from tlie Kennedy Farm with Owen Brown, and 
soon after came from Canada to his physician in Boston, Dr. David 
Thayer, living near Mr. Phillips. I cannot recall who was "our 
friend who received telegrams," unless it was Lewis Hayden, a 
Kentucky fugitive slave who long lived and died in Boston, where 
he finally served in the Legislature. The "actor from the scene" 
may have been a rather mythical John Anderson, whom Hayden 
enlisted for Brown, but who never got to the Ferry. John Brown, 
Jr., then living at Dorset, in Ohio, was the young Brown; the "old 
man" was Brown himself, badly wounded in the fray. 



192 Recollections of Seventy Years 

" Dear Friend : 

" I've not been able to get speech again with your 
counsellor, but Worcester [Higginson] and Dr. Howe and 
Emerson think there can be no risk to any one in your 
being here, and urge your immediate return. I concur in 
their opinion, and write at their request. Emerson says 
that at Concord they suppose you have gone south to 
Harper's Ferry. Perhaps it is as well to let them fancy 
so, and thus avoid the possibility of your absence direct- 
ing attention to the real key of the movement. 

" We are in motion with fresh plans, and need your 
counsel and knowledge of men and means. I wrote you 
yesterday by mail, and to-day telegraphed. No news." 

Mr. Phillips was right in his theory that my 
little-noticed absence did not expose " the real key 
of the movement." That was in my hands, because 
most of the correspondence with Brown had passed 
by my hands and those of my classmate Morton, 
then in Gerrit Smith's family at Peterboro, N. Y. 
I had foreseen this in my flight to Canada, because 
I knew that without my answers the correspond- 
ence, if in the hands of Virginia, could not well be 
understood.* For this reason I early determined 
not to testify anywhere, silence being the best pro- 
tection my implicated friends could have. I acted 

* A well-informed, anonymous person in Boston, about the time 
I returned from Canada (Oct. 26), who evidently wished my testi- 
mony taken, wrote in a disguised hand this note to Governor Wise, 
who turned it over to Andrew Hunter, the prosecuting attorney at 
Charlestovv'n, Va. : 

" There are two persons in Masstts, and I think only two, who, if 
summoned as witnesses, can explain the whole of Brown's plot. 
Their names are Francis B. Sanborn of Concord & Rev. T. W. Hig- 
ginson of Worcester, Mass. No time should be lost, as they may 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 193 

on this theory afterward, and it was a suspiciort 
of the truth which made the Senate Committee in 
the winter so eager to get me before Mason and 
Jefferson Davis. I had left a certain discretion 
with my sister, while giving her directions, and she 
exercised discretion and courage as nobly in Oc- 
tober as she did the next April, when she resisted 
my kidnappers. I had written her at once from 
Quebec, under my convenient name of Frederick 
B. Stanley, and to this she replied on Sunday, Oc- 
tober 23, the day following the second letter of 
Phillips : 
" My deae F. 

" I got your letter last night. As I had previously, 
on Friday, had a caU from Mr. Emerson and Mr. Stearns, 

abscond, but I do not think they will, as they think you would not 
think it best to send for them. 

A Friend of Order. 
[Endorsed] 

A Friend of Gov. Wise. 
Octo 1859. 
Call attention to this. 

Sent to me, now sent to you for what it 
is worth. 

H. A. W. 

RiCHMD Octo 29" 

My college acquaintance. Major James Savage of Boston, whose 
regiment occupied Charlestown for a while in the Civil War, found 
this and other papers in Hunter's office in 1861-2, and sent them 
home to his sister, Mrs. W. B. Rogers, who showed them to me at 
the time. I thought I recognized the hand of this informer, and 
asked permission to photograph the paper; but on reflection thought 
better of it. I was then out of danger, and this "friend of order" 
might have come to a new view of what "order" was; and I would 
not undertake to expose him. It was singular that Higginson, 
though active as Brown's friend, and quite a public character in 
'59, wliich I was not, was not summoned before Hunter's court or 
Mason's Committee. Like most Virginians of the period, Wise was 



194 Recollections of Seventy Years 

who thought the school should by all means go on for the 
present, I immediately went to see Mr. E. and had a 
consultation. By his advice, and almost command, I have 
suppressed the notes to Judge Hoar and Miss Waterman. 
He having seen Mr. Phillips and knowing Mr. Andrew's 
opinion, is strongly persuaded that you can return with 
safety, and will be here again in a few days. In the 
meantime the school is to go on with as little interrup- 
tion as possible. I am to take all the classes I can, and 
help rule, if need be; Miss Waterman to take all the 
Latin but Lucretius ; Ellen Emerson all the Greek except 
her own, and the German. It is thought that in this 
way all the scholars can be kept fully at work ; and if 
this don't do, Mr. Emerson will immediately undertake 
to get a man — Mr. Abbot or some one, for a short time. 
" Accepting his advice, and the opinion of your legal 
friends, I shall act as if your absence were to be only for 
a few days ; and not at once attend to the various orders 
you have sent. Your absence thus far has not apparently 

full of suspicions and very impulsive and changeable. On Novem- 
ber 6 he wrote to Hunter: 

" Better try Cook in your Court & turn Stevens over to Dist Ct 
of the U. S. But he may die & defeat ends of so turning him over. 
Cook is the worst of all these villians. I wish you to understand 
confidentially, that I will not reprieve or pardon one man now 
after the letters I have reed from the North. And as it may seem 
too severe for fair trial to put Stevens at bar let him be turned 
over." 

But by December 18, seeing what a favorite Brown had become 
at the North and in Europe, he wrote to Hunter again: 

" In reply to yours of the 15th I say definitively that Stevens 
ought not to be handed over, to the Federal authorities for trial. 
He is the deepest felon in guilt of all. I hope you informed the 
President exactly of the status of his case before the court. I am 
convinced that there is a political design in trying now to have him 
tried before the federal courts. He will not be delivered up with 
my consent." 



The Harper* s Ferry Alarm 195 

created any particular sensation. Mr. Emerson's chil- 
dren think you have gone to aid in some way the pris- 
oner. Miss Whiting told me in confidence that she 
thought you had gone to see Gerrit Smith. Mr. Emerson 
has promised to see Judge Hoar and confer with him. I 
have had some letters, all of which, except one from Miss 
Stephenson, I have done with as I thought best, after 
reading them. The one from Miss S. is marked confiden- 
tial — therefore I neither read it nor send it without your 
order. I have taken care of E. Morton's letters, what 
there was about. 

" I have ordered the coal, kept up the household ar- 
rangements as usual, and presented the same face to 
people as if all was going on peaceably. I am a little 
confused — stunned — at this great and sudden change; 
but am quite well, and do not bestow a thought on what 
people will say, even if the worst should come. Helen 
[our sister] is here, and will stay a few days longer. 
Julia [the faithful Irish servant] seems to realize that 
some mystery or misfortune is about us, though I don't 
know why. I have not written home, not wishing to dis- 
turb them too soon, nor to deal in uncertainties. I 
shall in a few days send to Charles [our brother, Dr. C. 
H. Sanborn] if he does not come here. I have not seen 
the Ripleys — and as no one knows that I am in pain, I 
do not have to submit to consolation. I don't like to have 
people think that your own safety was the principal mo- 
tive for your going away ; but if they do, there is no help 
for it. 

" I have no doubt much good will come out of this to 
all immediately concerned, and don't consider that you 
need any vindication. I hope you will get through this 
all without breaking down. We have now and then appre- 
hensions of somebody's coming to disturb things here, but 



196 Recollections of Seventy Years 

do not believe there is much danger of that. I shall hope 
to hear from you very soon. Tell me whose writing is 
this slip — a friend who knew you first through Anna 
[Walker]. He writes without name about some letters 
of his. 

" Good-bye. Yours truly, 

" S. E. S." 

I think this a model epistle. Of course I has- 
tened back to Concord at once, and took up the 
daily routine of life as if nothing had happened. 
In the week of my absence I had formed the ac- 
quaintance of a young Catholic priest at the Jesuit 
College in Quebec, had spent hours reading in the 
library, of which he was the custodian, and had 
made the reading acquaintance of Lucan's " Phar- 
salia " and the quaint biographies of Izaak Walton 
and Mrs. Colonel Hutchinson. My coming was 
hastened by this laconic note from Emerson: 

" By all means return at the first hour wheels or steam 
will permit. I assure every one that you shall be here 
Wednesday or Thursday. 

" Sunday Night. Yours ever, R. W. E." 

I had not been many days returned, when Colonel 
Charles Miller, a classmate of the poet Lowell at 
Harvard, and the son-in-law of Gerrit Smith, ap- 
peared at my door one afternoon, to bring me 
word that Morton had sailed for England from 
Quebec; that Mr. Smith was in the Utica Insane 
Asylum, or soon would be, and that my letters to 
Morton were buried under a brick in the broad 
walk leading to Mr. Smith's hall-door. In return 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 197 

he would learn what I had done with Mr. Smith's 
letters? I told him they were destroyed, so far as 
I could find them. He had been on a similar errand 
to John Brown, Jr., in Ohio, and was much re- 
lieved at what I told him. In fact, however, several 
of Smith's letters concerning John Brown had 
lodged either with Wentworth Higginson or 
Theodore Parker, to whom I had sent them, and 
they did afterward come back into my possession 
or use. A requisition for Mr. Smith from the 
governor of Virginia, as an accomplice of Brown, 
was received by the governor of New York, quite 
early in the excitement, and JNIorton had visited 
Albany to learn what was to be done about it. He 
did not see Governor Morgan, but a person quite as 
effective for the government of New York — 
Thurlow Weed, who expressed to JNIorton the wish 
that Gerrit Smith were in Canada. JNIorton took 
the hint and went to Quebec, whence he sailed for 
England; but Mr. Smith found a safer asylum at 
Utica, with Dr. Gray. Dr. Howe and JNIr. Stearns 
took a temporary refuge in Canada, as I had done, 
and was to do again, when the Senate of the United 
States, in the next winter, voted my arrest. But 
I now remained at home, or in Boston and Con- 
cord, made my usual round of visits; took part in 
the duty of raising money for the family of 
Brown, and met Mrs. Brown in Boston, when 
Higginson escorted her down from the Adirondac 
forest in November, to make her way from New 
England to Virginia, to take the last farewell of 
her husband in Charlestown. As she was on her 



198 Recollections of Seventy Years 

journey from Burlington, Vt., November 4, I got 
this note from Higginson, to which I gave instant 

attention : 

" Burlington, Thursday a. m. 
" Dear Friend : 

" Mrs. Brown will reach the American House, Boston, 
at 8 p. M. I have telegraphed Howe to call on her there 
to-night, and to ask Steams to go to Philadelphia with 
her — as I have been away four days, and she is not good 
at traveling. She is a noble woman, and the whole family 
are in the finest state of mind. I have telegraphed Rus- 
sell and Sennott * for leave to her to visit her husband. 
She goes via Boston for several reasons. I shall go to 
Worcester to-night, and Boston to-morrow a. m. to see 
about her. She should go on to-morrow with somebody. 
Can't you come to Boston to-morrow .? 

" T. W. H." 

I went as requested, and there renewed my ac- 
quaintance with John Brown's wife. I also tele- 
graphed to Miller McKim, in Philadelphia, to meet 
her there, to which he thus made answer: 

"Phila., Nov. 5, 
" Dear Sir : 

" Your telegram of yesterday came in due time. I have 
been at the Wharf this morning, but thus far (it is now 
12.30 p. M.) she has not made her appearance, or, if she 
has, I have not recognized her. She will probably arrive 
here in the next boat, which gets here at two o'clock — 
but I have an appointment to speak at an anti-slavery 
meeting, which will prevent me from meeting her. My 
friend Passmore Williamson, however, will be on hand and 

* Thomas Russell and George Sennott, from Boston — both then 
in Charlestown to befriend Brown. 




CABIN OF OWEN AND JASON liKOVVN, NEAR PASADENA, 1880 

Owen in the doorway 




FUNERAL OF OLIVER BROWN AND OTHERS AT NORTH ELBA, 1900 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 199 

pay her the attention which she may require. James Red- 
path will also delay his departure for New York till the 
6 o'clock train this evening, in order to meet her. He 
desires me to say this to you. 

" Regretting not to be able to meet Mrs. Brown, and 
hoping to be of service in some other way, if you should 
have need of my offices, I am, dear sir, 
" Yours truly, 

" J. M. McKiM." 

Mrs. Brown found good friends all along her 
way, going and coming, except in Maryland and 
Virginia; but even there she was treated with 
courtesy. Governor Wise, who did not wish any of 
the invaders of Virginia to be buried in that sacred 
soil, and who had sent the body of her son Watson 
to a medical college for preservation as a specimen 
of anatomy, allowed her to take her husband for 
burial at North Elba. Meanwhile the friends of 
Brown were raising money for the aid of the 
family, and were expressing some anxiety about the 
arrest of those who had aided the foray. Emerson, 
writing from his favorite hotel in Boston, the 
American House, November 9, had this to say 
to me: 

" My dear Sir : 

" Would it not be better that you should take legal 
counsel at this time, by explicitly stating your liabilities, 
if any exist, to a counsellor .^^ I was talking this morning 
with Mr. [John M.] Forbes, who looked with some un- 
easiness at the telegraphic despatch of this morning, and 
afterward I had a little conversation with Judge Hoar. 



200 Recollections of Seventy Years 

The Judge does not overestimate the United States power, 
yet could answer no question in the dark. And it is only 
on the contingency that there may be anything in your 
case not known or probable to them, that the suggestion 
can have any importance. 

" I have been talking with a few persons on the possi- 
bility of finding any gentleman here who might have pri- 
vate influence with Gov. Wise for Capt. Brown, and am 
to see others in the morning. 

" Yours ever, 

"R. W. Emerson." 

I was not inclined to unbosom myself to any, 
lawyer, in advance of some necessity for it, which 
I did not then see; and Rockwood Hoar, being a 
sitting judge in our State court, could not properly 
hear my case in advance. As to the suggestion of 
an envoy to Virginia, I replied (Nov. 10, 1859) : 

" There is hope in every effort to save Brown — but not 
much, as it would seem, in the representations of a private 
gentleman to Governor Wise, who is in this matter the 
servant of others. It is the Bellua multorum capitum of 
Virginia that will execute the sentence if it is done ; and 
that is perhaps implacable. Escape, difficult as it seems, 
is probably Brown's best chance for life. If a reprieve, 
or an arrest of judgment for another month were possi- 
ble, a rescue would not be so hard to manage. Brown's 
heroic character is having its influence on his keepers, as 
we learn ; but at present he does not wish to escape." 

Such was indeed the fact; Brown refused to be 
rescued by force, since it might involve his jailer, 
John Avis, in death or reproach. But when I got 
back to Concord from Canada, October 26, I had 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 201 

found much in agitation there, as will be seen by 
these passages in Alcott's Diary: 

" Oct. 26, Evening. See Sanborn at Emerson's house ; 
he has come home from looking into Capt. Brown's affairs. 
He was Brown's friend and entertained him here last 
May, as well as on a former visit in 1857. Ellery Chan- 
ning is at Emerson's also, and we discuss the matter at 
length, I defending the deed, under the circumstances, 
and the Man. His rescue would be difficult, even if he 
would consent to be taken. And the spectacle of a mar- 
tyrdom such as his must needs be, will be of greater serv- 
ice to the country, and to the coming in of a righteous 
rule, than years of agitation by the Press, or the voices 
of partisans. North and South, 'Twas a bold stroke, this 
of his, for justice universal, and it damages all (political) 
parties beyond repair. Even the Republicans must in 
some sense claim him as theirs in self-defense, and to jus- 
tify Republicanism in the people's eyes as Freedom's de- 
fender. 

" Wednesday, 9th November. Thoreau calls on me at 
the Orchard House. He thinks some one from the North 
should see Gov. Wise, or write concerning Brown's char- 
acter and motives, to influence the governor in his favor. 
Thoreau is the man to write, or Emerson. But there 
seems little or no hope of pleas for mercy. Slavery must 
have its way and Wise must do its bidding on peril of 
his own safety. 

" Nov. 28, Evening. At the Town Hall, a meeting be- 
ing called there to make arrangements for celebrating by 
appropriate services the day of Captain Brown's execu- 
tion. Simon Brown, Dr. Bartlett, Keycs, Emerson and 
Thoreau addressed the meeting; and Emerson, Thoreau, 
Brown and Keyes are chosen a committee to prepare the 



202 Recollections of Seventy Years 

service proper for the occasion. Sanborn is present also. 
Thoreau has taken a prominent part in the movement 
and chiefly arranged for it. 

" Nov. 30. See Thoreau again, and Emerson, concern- 
ing the Brown services on Friday, Dec. 2. We do not 
intend to have any speeches made on the occasion, but 
have selected appropriate passages from Brown's words, 
from the Poets and from the Scriptures, to be read by 
Thoreau, Emerson and myself, chiefly. The selection and 
arrangement is ours. Dec. 1. Again see Thoreau and 
Emerson. It is understood that I am to read the Mar- 
tyr's Service, Thoreau the selections from the poets and 
Emerson those from Brown's words. I copy the passages 
I am to read from the Wisdom of Solomon, David's 
Psalms and also from Plato. Sanborn has written a 
dirge, which will be sung, and Rev. E. H. Sears from 
Wayland, will ofl^er prayer." 

On the day of Brown's execution, December 2, 
a beautiful mild winter day, suitable for boating 
on our Concord River, these arrangements made 
by Alcott (who was then our town superintendent 
of schools), by Emerson, Thoreau, J. S. Keyes, 
afterward U. S. Marshal, and Simon Brown, who 
had been lieutenant-governor, were appropriately 
carried out in the presence of a large audience. 
The whole service was afterward published by 
Redpath in his "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," and 
the manuscript is in my possession, written in the 
various hands of the authors, and of Miss Ellen 
Emerson, who copied some portions.* My Dirge 

*Mr. Alcott's Diary (Dec. 2, 1859) says: "Ellen Emerson sends 
me her fair copy of the Martyr Service. At 2 p. m. we meet at 




h 






AUTOGRAPHS OF THOREAU AND ALCOTT 




The Harper's Ferry Alarm 203 

was sung by the whole congregation, and an ode 
of mine was also read; but so careful were my 
townsmen that I should not be prejudiced by the 
publication of my name, that I was described 
merely as a " gentleman of Concord." I was pres- 
ent, and so was Rev. E. H. Sears of Wayland^, 
Mrs. Emerson's favorite clergyman then, who, on 
the smooth cover of his prayer-book, wrote these 
prophetic lines, as the service proceeded: 

" Not any spot six feet by two 

Will hold a man like thee; 
John Brown will tramp the shaking earth 

From Blue Ridge to the sea, 
Till the strong angel come at last 

And opes each dungeon door, 
And God's Great Charter holds and waves 

O'er all his humble poor." 

George Hoyt, of Athol, who had bravely gone 
to Charlestown to assist in the defense of Brown, 
had by this time returned home, and wrote me, De- 
cember 9, a warning letter, after a conversation 
with him, in which I rather slighted his fears for 
me. He said: 

" I feel it my duty to point out the dangers, even if I 
cannot prevail on you to avoid them. It is probable you 
already see the new trap which Senator Mason has set 
for you. His resolution of inquiry empowers the com- 

the Town Hall, our own townspeople present mostly, and many 
from the adjoining towns. Simon Brown is chairman; the readings 
are by Thoreau, Emerson, C. Bowers, and Alcott; and Sanborn's 
' Dirge ' is sung by the company, 



204 Recollections of Seventy Years 

mittee of the Senate to send for persons and papers. Once 
in the city of Washington, a witness before that com- 
mittee, it will be easy to take you into Virginia. If you 
avoid anything, you must shun the process of this com- 
mittee of investigation. Mason is an old fox." 

A postscript fixes the date before which F. J. 
Merriam, who escaped with Owen Brown from the 
Kennedy Farm, must have been in Boston and at 
my house in Concord; where I decHned to see him 
(out of regard for his safety), though I gave him 
shelter and sent him on to safety in Canada. Hoyt 
writes : 

" Merriam, whom I saw when he last visited Boston, 
was chagrined at your lack of confidence in his judgment. 
I think him clearly insane." 

During November there had been serious anx- 
ieties felt by some of our friends, of the kind 
mentioned by Hoyt; and Dr. Howe, in a letter of 
November 14, had pointed out to the public a pos- 
sible danger arising under laws of which most per- 
sons were ignorant. The precise danger is specified 
in a letter of mine to Higginson, of November 13, 
thus : 

" I had a talk with Andrew last night, who showed me 
the statute about witnesses. It appears by a law of 
August 8, 1846, a witness whose evidence is deemed mate- 
rial by any U. S. judge, may be arrested by a warrant 
from a judge, without any previous summons, and taken 
before that judge to give bond for his appearing to tes- 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 205 

tify. This leaves no room for a writ of habeas corpus, 
unless the State judges are willing to take the ground 
that the statute is unconstitutional, or that it means the 
process shall run only within the judge's district or cir- 
cuit; and AndreAV does not believe (nor do I) that our 
judges are ready to take either ground. Therefore, if 
arrested, a witness can only be released by a tumult. This 
may do very well in Worcester, but is rather precarious 
in Boston ; and therefore Phillips thinks there should be 
some concert of action between those likely to be arrested. 
Would your Worcester people go down to Boston to take 
Dr. Howe or Wendell Phillips out of the marshal's 
hands ? " 

On the 19th I added a statement of my own 
position, in a letter to Higginson dealing with 
some other matters: 

" I shall pursue my usual occupations, or any that I 
may take up, whatever summons or other process may be 
issued; shall resist arrest by force, shall refuse to sue a 
writ of habeas corpus, — but, if arrested, shall consent to 
be rescued only by force. It is possible the anxiety of 
friends may induce me to modify this course, but I think 
not. I have to-night had a long talk with Judge Hoar, 
from which I infer that this particular statute of 1846 
would be resisted by his court ; but that no resistance 
would be made to an ordinary summons and capias. There 
is no hope in the courts at present; but the people can 
prevent the execution of this law. This is why I shall 
refuse any writ of habeas corpus. 

" Talking of a rescue for Brown, have you gone any 
farther in that matter? and can anything be done.? Al- 
cott is ready to go on and get communication with Capt. 



206 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Brown, if that is thought best ; and he could perhaps do 
so — he better than most persons. Write me what you 
think of this. I shall probably be in Boston on Friday 
and Saturday after Thanksgiving, if not before ; perhaps 
I may come to Worcester in my vacation — or I may go 
southward or westward." 

Nothing came of this alarm about the old law; 
but, as Hoyt had written me, it w^as feared that 
Mason's summons might be used to get obnoxious 
persons into Virginia; and when John Brown, Jr., 
was summoned before Mason, as I was early in 
January, 1860, he declined to go to Washington; 
first, because he would be liable to seizure in ]^ass- 
ing through Virginia or ^laryland; and next, be- 
cause he would not testify against others at the 
price of his own exemption. I received no previous 
assurance from Mason, but when I offered to tes- 
tify in Massachusetts, through fear of lack of 
protection in Washington, Mason assured me that 
be would be personally responsible for my safety. 
I was not so much concerned for that as resolved 
never to testify before slaveholders in regard to 
my friends. 

Senator Mason refused my proposal to testify 
in Massachusetts, as I supposed he w^ould, and I 
then wrote him that under no conditions would I 
appear before his committee, but throw mj^self on 
my rights as a citizen of Massachusetts; reminding 
him also that I could hardly rely on his offer of 
protection, since my friend. Senator Sumner, had 
been brutally assaulted a few years earlier, in the 



The Harper's Ferry Alarm 207 

Senate chamber itself. Upon the receipt of this 
missive, Mason reported me to the Senate as a con- 
tumacious witness, and my arrest was voted, Feb- 
ruary 16, 1860, as that of John Brown, Jr., and 
James Redpath was. A few of the Southern Sen- 
ators, seeing that my attitude about State Rights 
w^as quite similar to theirs, voted against my arrest, 
and began to send me their political speeches. Not 
choosing to be seized before I was quite read}'', I 
retired again to Canada, in the latter part of Feb- 
ruary, taking North Elba in my northward route, 
in order to see the Brown family, and to make ar- 
rangements for two of Brown's daughters, Anne 
and Sarah, to enter my school, as they did, in 
March. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Personal Replevin 

WHEN I had written and forwarded to 
the Vice-President and to my friend, 
Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, 
my protest against the Senate's un- 
lawful action, as I viewed it, I returned to Concord, 
and went about my business as usual, besides fre- 
quent visits to Boston and lecturing in New Hamp- 
shire. After so long an interval, with no effort at 
arresting me, I concluded that the Senate officials 
had given up their purpose of taking me to Wash- 
ington, as they would have done had they been 
wise. But on the evening of April 3, 1860, after 
I had been out making calls in the village of Con- 
cord, and was sitting quietly in my study on the 
first floor, after nine o'clock, my door-bell rang. 
Our one servant, Julia Leary, had gone to bed. 
My sister Sarah, who was still my housekeeper, 
was in her chamber, and, without anticipating any 
harm, I went down into the front hall and an- 
swered the bell. A young man presented him- 
self and handed me a note, which I stepped 
back to read by the light of the hall lamp. 
It said that the bearer was a person deserving 
charity, and I am satisfied that he was so before he 
got away from Concord that night. When I 

208 



Personal Replevin 209 

looked up from reading the note, four men had 
entered my hall, and one of them, Silas Carleton 
by name (a Boston tipstaff, as I afterward 
learned), came forward and laid his hand on me, 
saying, " I arrest you." 

I said, " By what authority? If you have a war- 
rant read it, for I shall not go with you unless you 
show your warrant." 

Carleton, or the youth who had begged my 
charity, then began to read the order of the Senate 
for my arrest. But my sister, who had feared, as 
I did not, what this visit meant, now rushed down 
the stairs, opened the other door of the hall and 
began to alarm the neighbors. Seeing that they 
were likely to be interrupted in their mission, my 
five callers then folded up their warrant, slipped a 
pair of handcuffs on my wrists before I suspected 
what they were doing, and tried to force me from 
the house. 

I was young and strong and resented this indig- 
nity. They had to raise me from the floor and be- 
gan to carry me (four of them) to the door where 
my sister stood, raising a constant alarm. My 
hands were powerless, but as they approached the 
door I braced my feet against the posts and de- 
layed them. I did the same at the posts of the 
veranda, and it was some minutes before they got 
me on the gravel walk at the foot of my stone 
steps. Meanwhile, the church bells were ringing 
a fire alarm, and the people were gathering by tens. 
At the stone posts of the gateway I checked their 
progress once more, and again, when the four ras- 



210 Recollections of Seventy Years 

cals lifted me to insert me, feet foremost, in their 
carriage (a covered hack with a driver on the box) , 
I braced myself against the sides of the carriage 
door and broke them in. By this time it was re- 
vealed to them that my unfettered feet were mak- 
ing all this trouble, and one of the four, named 
Tarleton, wearing a long black beard, grasped my 
feet and brought them together, so that I could no 
longer use them in resistance. They had got me 
into their hack as far as my knees, when my sister, 
darting forward, grasped the long beard of my 
footman and pulled with so much force that the 
pain of it comjDclled him to lose his grasp, and my 
feet felt the ground again, outside of the carriage. 

Now while all this was going on a great crowd 
had collected, among them old Colonel Whiting, 
with his daughter Anne, and his stout cane, with 
which he began to beat the horses ; while JNIiss Whit- 
ing climbed to the box beside the driver, and as- 
sured him that she was going as far as he and his 
horses went. They began to start at the repeated 
strokes of the good colonel's cane, and my bearers 
were left a rod or two behind the hack into which 
they had not been able to force me. They saw at 
once that their kidnapping game was defeated, but 
they still held me, hatless and in my evening slip- 
pers, in the street in front of my house. 

At that moment, my counsel, J. S. Keyes, ap- 
peared by my side, asking me if I petitioned for a 
writ of habeas corpus. " By all means," said I, 
and he hurried off to the house of Judge Hoar, 
some twenty rods away. 



Personal Replevin 211 

The judge, hearing* the tumult, and suspecting 
what it was, went to his Hbrary and began filling 
out the proper blank for the great writ of personal 
replevin. In less than ten minutes after my verbal 
petition the writ was in the hands of the stalwart 
deputy sheriff, John Moore, who at once made the 
formal demand on my captors to surrender their 
prisoner. Stupidly, as they had acted all along, 
they refused. 

The sheriff then called on the 150 men and 
women present to act as his jjosse co^nitatus, which 
some twenty of the men gladly did, and I was forci- 
bly snatched from senatorial custody. At the same 
time my Irish neighbors rushed upon them and 
forced them to take to their broken carriage, and 
make off toward Lexington, the way they had 
driven up in the early evening. They were pursued 
by twenty or thirty of my townsmen, some of them 
as far as Lexington, but got away with no very 
serious bruises. 

I was committed to the custody of Captain George 
L. Prescott (in the Civil War, Colonel Prescott, 
killed at Petersburg) and spent the night in his 
house not far from the Old JVIanse, armed, for my 
better defense, with a six-shooter, which Mr. Bull, 
the inventor of the Concord grape (then chairman 
of the selectmen) , insisted I should take. I slept 
peacefully all the rest of that night, from about 11 
o'clock, when the fra}'- ended. 

In the morning I was taken to Boston by Sheriff 
Moore and carried to the old court house, near the 
present City Hall, where the justices of the Su- 



212 Recollections of Seventy Years 

preme Court were holding a law term. My coun- 
sel, who volunteered for the case, were John A. 
Andrew, soon afterward Governor; Samuel 
Sewall, a cousin of JNlrs. Alcott, and my college 
classmate, Robert Treat Paine. The case was 
argued by Andrew and Sewall in my behalf, and 
by C. L. Woodbury, son of the distinguished Jus- 
tice Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, who had 
been dead for some j^ears, but whose son was the 
Democratic district attorney. 

The court room was filled with my Concord and 
Boston friends, among them Wendell Phillips and 
Walt Whitman; and in the afternoon Chief Jus- 
tice Shaw, the most eminent jurist in New Eng- 
land, delivered the following decision, setting me 
free : 

OPINION OF THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT. 

F. B. Sanborn vs. Silas Carleton. 

Shaw, C. J. This arrest was made by Silas Carleton, 
a citizen and inhabitant of Massachusetts ; and in his an- 
swer under oath, he shows a warrant to Dunning R. Mc- 
Nair, sergeant-at-arms of the Senate of the United States, 
and says that the sergeant-at-arms entered an order upon 
it, delegating the power to Carleton to make the arrest. 
There is therefore no conflict in this case between the 
authority of an executive officer of the United States and 
an officer of this Commonwealth. 

It appears by the answer of the officer, which stands as 
part of the return to the writ of habeas corpus, that Carle- 
ton claims to have arrested Sanborn under a warrant pur- 
porting to have been issued under the hand and seal of 



Personal Replevin 213 

the vice-president of the United States and president of 
the Senate. It recites the appointment of a committee of 
the Senate to inquire into the circumstances of the attack 
made by a body of men upon the arsenal of the United 
States at Harper's Ferry; the citation of Sanborn to an- 
swer as a witness before such committee; that he refused 
to attend according to such summons ; that he was thereby 
guilty of a contempt ; and directing Dunning R. McNair, 
sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, to arrest the said San- 
born, wherever he could find him, and bring him before 
the Senate to answer for such contempt. This warrant 
seems to have been issued on the 16th of February last. 
There is an indorsement of the same date, by the sergeant- 
at-arms, authorizing and empowering the said Carleton, 
the respondent, to make such arrest; and the respondent 
justifies the arrest made on the 3d April, instant, under 
that process. The question is whether this arrest is jus- 
tified by this return. 

This question is a very broad and a very important 
one, and opens many interesting questions as to the func- 
tions and powers of the United States Senate, as a constit- 
uent part both of the legislative and executive depart- 
ments of the United States government ; and the modes 
in which they are to be exercised, and the limits by which 
they are qualified. 

It is admitted in the arguments that there is no express 
provision in the Constitution of the United States, giving 
this authority in terms ; but it is maintained that it is nec- 
essarily incidental to various authorities vested in the 
Senate of the United States, in its legislative, executive 
and judicial functions, and must therefore be held to be 
conferred by necessary implication. 

These questions manifestly requiring great delibera- 
tion and research in order to come to a satisfactory con- 



214 Recollections of Seventy Years 

elusion, and some preliminary questions having been sug- 
gested by the petitioner's counsel, it was proposed, and 
not objected to by the learned district attorney and as- 
sistant district attorney of the United States, by whom 
the court were attended in behalf of the respondent, to 
consider these preliminary questions first ; because, if the 
objections, on the face of them, were sustained, it would 
supersede the necessity of discussing the other questions 
arising in the case. These points have been argued. 

For obvious reasons, we lay out of this inquiry the case 
of the Senate, when acting in their judicial capacity, on 
the trial of an impeachment laid before them by the House 
of Representatives ; and we suppose the same considera- 
tions would apply to the case of the House of Represen- 
tatives in summoning witnesses to testify before them, as 
the grand inquest of the United States, with a view to an 
impeachment. 

Then the objections taken to this warrant, as apparent 
on the face of it, as rendering it insufficient to justify 
the arrest of the petitioner, are three : 

1. That the sergeant-at-arms, in his capacity as an 
officer of the Senate, had no authority to execute pro- 
cess out of the limits of the District of Columbia, over 
which the United States have, by the Constitution, exclu- 
sive jurisdiction. 

2. That a sergeant-at-arms is not an officer known to 
the Constitution or laws of the United States, as a gen- 
eral executive, of known powers, like a sheriff or mar- 
shal ; that he is appointed and recognized by the rules of 
the Senate as an officer exercising powers regulated by 
the rules and orders of the Senate, and can only exercise 
such powers as are conferred on him by such general rules 
and orders, made with a view to the regular proceedings 
of the Senate; or such as may be conferred by the Sen- 



Personal Replevin 215 

ate by special resolves and acts, as a single department 
of the government, without the concurrence of the other 
members of the government. 

S. That by the warrant returned, the power to arrest 
the respondent was in terms limited to McNair, the ser- 
geant-at-arms, and could not be executed by a deputy. 

In regard to the first, it seems to us that the objection 
assumes a broader ground than it is necessary to occupy 
in deciding this preliminary question. We are not pre- 
pared to say that in no case can the Senate direct process 
to be served beyond the limits of the district, by an au- 
thority expressly given for that purpose. 

The case of Anderson v. Dtmn, 6 Wheat. 204, cited in 
the argument, has little application to this question. It 
is manifest that that was a writ of error from the circuit 
court for the District of Columbia, and it appears that 
the alleged contempt of Anderson, in offering a bribe to 
a member of the House of Representatives, was committed 
in the District of Columbia, the act complained of as the 
trespass was done therein, and the process in question was 
served therein. In that case the process was served by 
the sergeant-at-arms in person, under an express author- 
ity given by the House of Representatives, by their re- 
solve for that purpose, in pursuance of which the speaker's 
warrant was issued. 

The second question appears to us far more material. 
The sergeant-at-arms of the Senate is an officer of that 
house, like their doorkeeper, appointed by them, and re- 
quired by their rules and orders to exercise certain powers, 
mainly with a view to order and due course of proceed- 
ing. He is not a general officer, known to the law, as a 
sheriff, having power to appoint general deputies, or to 
act by special deputation in particular cases ; nor like a 
marshal, who holds analogous powers, and possesses sim- 



216 Recollections of Seventy Years 

ilar functions, under the laws of the United States, to 
those of sheriffs and deputies under the State laws. 

But even where it appears, by the terms or the reason- 
able construction of a statute, conferring an authority on 
a sheriff, that it was intended he should execute it per- 
sonally, he cannot exercise it by general deputy, and of 
course he cannot do it by special deputation. Wood v. 
Ross, 11 Mass. 271. 

But, upon the third point, the court are all of opinion 
that the warrant affords no justification. Suppose that 
the Senate had authority, by the resolves passed by them, 
to cause the petitioner to be arrested and brought before 
them, it appears by the warrant issued for that purpose 
that the power was given alone to McNair, sergeant-at- 
arms, and there is nothing to indicate any intention on 
their part to have such arrest made by any other person. 
There is no authority, in fact, given by this warrant to 
delegate the authority to any other person. It is a gen- 
eral rule of the common law, not founded on any judicial 
decision or statute provision, but so universally received as 
to have grown into a maxim, that a delegated authority 
to one does not authorize him to delegate it to another. 
Delegata potestas non potest delegari. Broom's Maxim's 
(3d ed.) 755. This grows out of the nature of the sub- 
ject. A special authority is in the nature of a trust. It 
implies confidence in the ability, skill or discretion of the 
party intrusted. The author of such a power may extend 
it if he will, as is done in ordinary powers of attorney, 
giving power to one or his substitute or substitutes to do 
the acts authorized. But when it is not so extended it is 
limited to the person named. 

The counsel for the respondent asked what authority 
there is for limiting such warrant to the person named ; 
it rather belongs to those who wish to justify under such 



Personal Replevin 217 

delegated power, to show judicial authority for the ex- 
tension. 

On the special ground that this respondent had no legal 
authority to make the arrest, and has now no legal au- 
thority to detain the petitioner in his custody, the order 
of the court is that the said Sanborn be discharged from 
the custody of said Carleton. 

I was then taken by enthusiastic friends to East 
Cambridge in a carriage (to avoid rearrest in Bos- 
ton), and from there returned to Concord, where 
a i^ublic meeting was held that evening to protest 
against the outrage offered to a citizen and to the 
town. No further effort was made to arrest me, 
the time and manner of my seizure having put the 
public oj)inion of Massachusetts wholly on my side. 
Citizens of Boston presented my sister with a 
handsome revolver in recognition of her tact and 
courage. The next September I had the satisfac- 
tion of helping to nominate INIr. Andrew for gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts in the Worcester Conven- 
tion, to which I was sent as a Concord delegate. 
We elected and reelected him, and three years later 
he appointed me secretary of the Board of State 
Charities, a new and important office. 

This year, 1860, was the last of Judge Shaw's 
life, and he had no opportunity, even had he wished 
it, to modify this decision. It agreed with the sen- 
timents of two-thirds of the people of JNIassachu- 
setts, and made me popular in quarters where I 
was not known before. The Democratic marshal 
of New Hampshire, a distant cousin of mine, sent 



218 Recollections of Seventy Years 

me word that, if I chose to visit my native State, 
he should not be able to find me, in case a second 
warrant for my arrest should issue. But I had no 
occasion to accept his suggestion, being from that 
time forward as safe from arrest as the marshals 
themselves. Indeed, I brought suit against the 
five kidnappers who visited Concord, and also had 
them indicted at the next term of the JNIiddlesex 
County Court for the criminal offense of kidnap- 
ping, which had been carefully defined in our laws. 
But the Civil War coming on, early in 1861, and 
several of my kidnappers, with their counsel (Gen- 
eral B. F. Butler) , having volunteered or gone to 
the front, I withdrew my suit, and requested the 
district attorney to nol inos. the indictment. 



CHAPTER IX 

Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 

SO important and so thrilling an interlude 
in my j^outhful life as the John Brown 
Foray, not merely into Missouri and Vir- 
ginia, but into world-history, could not 
occur without leaving with me deep impressions; 
and it was followed by an aftermath of events and 
consequences. " To be in a plot," said Cardinal 
de Retz, speaking of his early conspiracy to as- 
sassinate Cardinal Richelieu, " is often a mark of 
folly; but nothing is more likely to make a man 
wise, at least for a time, than to have been in one. 
The reason is that the danger still subsists, after 
the opportunity is lost, which requires more pru- 
dence and circumspection than ordinary in one's 
behavior." I fancy that this result occurred in my 
own case, and that the confidence reposed in one 
so young as I was, in 1858, was partly in conse- 
quence of the habit of thought and feeling which 
this adventure strengthened in me. But I cannot 
say, with that cardinal, in the same connection, 
" Yet I wish with all my heart that I had never 
been in that plot " ; for I have never in the least 
regretted my small share in Brown's enterprise. 
What was my feeling at the time, when the ill 
consequences to myself, present or prospective, 

319 



220 Recollections of Seventy Years 

were in full view during the winter of 1859-60, 
may be seen by the letters I wrote to my mother, 
who, approaching sixty, and with many reasons 
for anxiety on other accounts, was naturally in 
need of assurance and comfort. December 1, the 
day before the execution of Brown, and of the 
funeral service in his honor at Concord, I wrote 
to her from Concord thus : 

" My dear Mother : 

" I was meaning to come home to Hampton Falls at 
Thanksgiving, but Helen wrote it was not advisable, — 
and after that I made engagements hereabouts which 
kept me. Now I may come, but not till Monday, if at 
all. My school begins on Wednesday, December 7th, and 
I have the town schools and my domestic matters to look 
after in this vacation. But 1 shall come if I can, and 
if not now, then some Sunday in the winter. 

" From the newspapers and the other accounts of me 
and my connection with Captain Brown, very likely you 
may feel some anxiety about me ; and I will explain why 
there is no occasion for alarm. In the first place, there 
is no evidence against me as a criminal, in any fair court ; 
the only way of arresting me will be as a witness. Now 
the law of 1846, which allows witnesses to be suddenly 
arrested and carried out of the State, cannot be enforced 
here, because the Supreme Court will prevent it; and 
no officer would venture to kidnap a man. The ordinary 
process for summoning a witness is slow, and would give 
me time to escape, if I wished to do so. I don't intend, 
however, to be arrested, and I think I can avoid it without 
escaping. At any rate, the trials for which they want 
my evidence do not come on until May ; and they will 
not, naturally, summon the witnesses until April, before 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 221 

which time there may be many changes. Even if I 
went as a witness, I would be under the United States 
protection, — and without violating the law they could not 
harm me. 

" But I do not think it at all probable they will even 
attempt to arrest me, and I feel no fear of it. Dr. Howe 
has left the country, it is true; but I think he will soon 
return. I went to Canada when I did, not so much to 
avoid arrest, as to prevent the obtaining of information ; 
and, unless I meant to flee the country altogether, should 
not go there again. 

" What I have really done to aid Brown is nothing more 
than all men ought to do ; and it will bring only glory to 
me hereafter, if not now. I am sorry to give my friends, 
and especially you, so much anxiety ; but otherwise I have 
never for a moment regretted my connection with the 
affair. If my name is remembered at all in it, it will 
be in an honorable way. The fruits of Brown's acts are 
to be a great good, I have no doubt. I shall take no active 
part in our meeting here to-morrow, nor do anything 
imprudent if I can avoid it. 

" So you must keep up good courage, and remember 
that the worst part of it all, to me, is to have others 
suffer on my account. My school goes on well, and I 
am likely to have more scholars than ever this winter. 
If I come on Monday (December 5), I shall send you 
word that morning; but I doubt if I can come conveni- 
ently. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Frank B. Sanborn." 

At the writing of this the Senate Committee's 
action was not foreseen. That changed the method 
of procedure, but did not otherwise affect my mind. 



222 Recollections of Seventy Years 

I was summoned in January, as already mentioned, 
and by the Marshal himself in the Concord post- 
office, a Democratic headquarters. I refused to 
obey the summons, and the Senate voted my ar- 
rest. But I could not believe that prudent men, 
such as I thought the slave oligarchy to be, would 
add to the excitement of the North by arresting 
me. I retired to Canada to prepare my protest 
and to visit the Brown family on the way, as I 
did; and on my return to Concord I wrote my 
mother again, February 28, 1860, as follows: 

" You see by the date of my letter that I am still here, 
though in a place unknoAVTi to all but a few persons. 
[It was the house of Colonel Whiting, near my school.] 
I think I might have been about just as freely as usual, 
since my arrest was ordered by the Senate ; but to be on 
the safe side I have taken these precautions. It is not 
generally known even that I am in town, though I was 
walking in the street every evening but one last week, 
and on Sunday walked all around town, and called at half 
a dozen houses. I keep myself busy indoors with reading 
and writing, and keep an eye on my school, which goes 
on very well in my absence, under Mr. Whittemore and 
the other teachers. I am very Avell, thovigh I wish I had 
a little more exercise. 

" You have seen, I suppose, my petition to the Senate, 
which was yesterday presented by Senator Hale, of New 
Hampshire. The objections made in it to the Senate's 
authority are no doubt good, and will seem so to people, 
the more they are examined and discussed. I do not think 
the Senate will assent to them ; but neither do I think 
they will carry the matter so far as to arrest me. They 
and the country are tired of the whole thing, and will get 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 223 

it off their hands as soon as convenient I believe. I 
shall not leave the country, nor even this State, as I now 
think ; and I conclude I shall be left at liberty to go about 
my business in a few weeks. I doubt very much if any 
warrant for my arrest has been issued by the Vice-Presi- 
dent, — for I can hear of none such. Even if I should be 
arrested it would be only a nominal detention, I think. 

" So I hope you will not be concerned about me ; for 
I am as unconcerned as ever in my life; and while I do 
not mean to give up a single point to the Senate, I ex- 
pect to be unmolested for the future. Sarah is as well 
as usual, and Julia still keeps house for me. I slept 
at home last Saturday night. The Brown girls, Anne 
and Sarah, daughters of John Brown, went to school 
yesterday." 

This confidence on my part was not assumed, 
for I actually could not suppose the partisans of 
the Buchanan administration unwise enough to ar- 
rest me, and give me the advantage of the public 
sympathy, which that would surely excite. But 
the folly of the pro-slavery party was beyond cal- 
culation; and their agents not only served their 
long-withheld warrant early in April, but did it 
in the dark, and with circumstances of outrage. 
When I had been discharged from arrest by Chief 
Justice Shaw, April 4, 1860, I wrote again to my 
mother, dating from Concord, April 6 : 

" You have seen by the papers the state of affairs in 
my case, and how entirely we have defeated the out- 
rageous purpose of the ruffians who came to seize me. 
I have slept every night in Concord, and every night 
but one in my own house; and shall remain here and 



224 Recollections of Seventy Years 

pursue my duties, — feeling very little apprehension for 
the future. The people defended me, and will again. 
Charles (Dr. Sanborn) is here to-day, also George Walker 
and other friends of mine; and the four ruffians are held 
to bail for kidnapping. I shall also sue them for damages, 
and hope to build my schoolhouse out of their money. 
" I am well, and was not much hurt in the affray. 
Sarah also is pretty well, though tired. She has become 
quite a lioness by the means." 

With the rest of the intimate friends of Brown, 
affairs took various courses. Dr. Howe and Mr. 
Stearns testified before Mason's committee, during 
the winter, and so did other witnesses. Edwin 
IMorton went to Europe, as a means of protecting 
Gerrit Smith, and there renewed his acquaintance 
with Thomas Cholmondeley, Thoreau's friend, at 
Shrewsbury and Hodnet, besides making new ac- 
quaintances in England and France; but he re- 
turned in the summer of 1860, and commenced the 
study of law in Plymouth. Gerrit Smith by this 
time was discharged from the Utica insane asyhim, 
and maintained his attitude of admiration for 
Brown and ignorance of his plans. The Civil 
War came on, and gave the country much else 
to think of. My school dwindled in consequence 
of the war, and in 1863 I accepted the invitation 
of Mr. Stearns to succeed Moncure Conway in 
the editorship of the Commonwealth, an emanci- 
pation weekly in Boston. I was often in consul- 
tation with Morton (who had recovered from a 
long illness, and begun the practice of law in Bos- 



^crKhts' Instrlution:, anb ^ilassac^ttsetts ^sglam for % §lircir. 



'Ofi€o?i. 



t^^ '^ ^#/l 







"^..^Z^-^ 





Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 225 

ton), as to how we should best preserve the true 
story of Brown's Virginia plans, which the un- 
willingness of Mr. Smith to avow his connection 
with the scheme, had left in much uncertainty as 
to the actual facts. Finally, in 1871, after the 
happy conclusion of the Civil War, IVIorton and I 
agreed that I should write for the Atlantic 
3Ionthly an anonymous article, stating the general 
facts as we both knew them. This was done, and 
led to a painful correspondence with the Smiths, 
the general result of which was published by me 
in the New York Critic some years ago. What is 
essential will here be reproduced. It may be stated 
that :Mr. Stearns had died in 1867; Mr. Smith died 
in 1874, Dr. Howe in 1876, and Morton, at his 
Swiss retirement in Morges, on the lake of Ge- 
neva, in 1900. 

The late Octavius Frothingham's first edition of 
Gerrit Smith's biography in 1878 led to a sharp 
controversy in the New York journals concerning 
the statements made therein about Mr. Smith's 
connection with the plans of John Brown for at- 
tacking negro slavery by force. At that time, 
anticipating that I might be called to declare in 
public the facts within my knowledge, but very 
unwilling to appear in the controversy, I wrote a 
letter to the New York Evening Post, which was 
to be my statement for those who wished to learn 
the truth. Circumstances so turned out — charges 
against me personally having been withdrawn by 
General John Cochrane, a nephew of INIr. Smith, 
upon my showing him the autograph letters — that 



226 Recollections of Seve7ity Years 

I had no need to make disclosures in 1878. Since 
then, the death of most of the persons cognizant 
of the facts, and hkely to be pained by such a 
disclosure, make it possible for me to publish what 
I long held back, at the request, as will be seen, 
of friends whose wishes I could not disregard, 
unless it became absolutely necessary, in the in- 
terest of historical truth. I here subjoin so much 
of my letter to the Post as the lapse of time and 
change of circumstances have not rendered need- 
less: 

THE LETTER OF MARCH 15, 1878 

To the Editor of the Evening Post, New York: 

Ever since the controversy began, some two months 
since, concerning the correctness with which Mr. Froth- 
insj-ham has narrated the incidents of John Brown's con- 
nection with Gerrit Smith, appeals have been made to 
me as one who ought to take some part in the dispute. 
To all such I have answered that nothing but absolute 
necessity, — by which I meant an exigency I could not 
properly decline to meet, — would draw me into a con- 
troversy so painful. I had privately answered the ques- 
tions of those who had a right to seek information ; and 
I had publicly stated (in the Atlantic Monthly for 1875) 
what I thought the public had a right to know. But 
now that exigency seems to have arisen, and I therefore 
desire to say, in your columns, that my own first knowl- 
edge of the plans of John Brown for invading the South 
and forcibly emancipating slaves, — the same plans he 
afterwards attempted to execute in Virginia, — was ob- 
tained from Brown in Gerrit Smith's house at Peter- 
boro, N. Y., February 22, 1858, and in the presence of 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 227* 

Mr. Smith himself, with whom I discussed them fully on 
that day, the following day, and again on the 24fth of 
May, 1858, at the Revere House in Boston. 

I do not mean that every detail of those plans was 
then, or afterward, talked over between Mr. Smith and 
myself ; but I do mean that we talked, or heard John 
Brown talk, on the subject for at least six hours, and 
probably for more than ten hours ; until the general 
features of his enterprise became as well known to me, and, 
as I have always supposed, to Mr. Smith, as are the gen- 
eral scope and methods of most undertakings in which 
men deliberately engage. We two, Mr. Smith, then 
sixty-one years old, and myself, a little turned of twenty- 
six, on the 23d of February, 1858, at about the hour of 
sunset, did deliberately and earnestly engage with each 
other that we would stand by and support John Brown 
in his undertaking, for reasons which Mr. Frothingham 
set forth in our very words, so far as I can remember 
them. Up to the day of John Brown's capture at Harper's 
Ferry, in October, 1859, that engagement was faithfully 
kept. Whatever we had encouraged Brown to expect of 
us in that matter, so far as it seemed possible, we two, the 
old Abolitionist and the young Republican, punctually 
and exactly did, each in his own way. And I have yet to 
learn that John Brown, up to the day of his death, ever 
doubted that we had done so, or that we would have done 
more if we could. Neither of us, probably, was ever fully 
and coolly convinced of the wisdom of his scheme. Mr. 
Smith wrote me. May 7, 1858 (a letter still in existence), 
that he never was so convinced; yet he aided it then, as 
he had done before, and as he did afterwards. I cor- 
responded with him frequently about it, for a year and a 
half, — that is, from March, 1858, to September, 1859, 
in which month I believe I sent to INIr. Smith the last 



228 Recollections of Seventy Years 

of many letters I received from Brown. First and last, 
I probably sent Mr. Smith twenty letters of Brown's, and 
received from liim perhaps as many which related to this 
affair. These letters I destroyed in 1859-60, or so many 
of them as were then in my hands ; but some that were 
then in possession of other persons, — Theodore Parker, 
Wentworth Higginson, or Dr. Howe, — escaped destruc- 
tion, and are now in existence. 

At no time during the nineteen months between Febru- 
ary 19, 1858 (when, as I suppose, Gerrit Smith first 
heard of Brown's plan from Brown himself, and in Smith's 
Peterboro house), and October 18, 1859, when we heard 
of Brown's capture, did Mr, Smith intimate to me that 
he had ceased to support and aid the plan ; nor, in fact, 
did he cease to aid it. When he wrote me that " as 
things now stand it seems to me it would be madness to 
attempt to execute it" (May 7, 1858), he had just 
given money to aid it ; and within a month afterward he 
gave money again. He allowed Brown to take the re- 
sponsibility of failure, — only warning him that, at that 
time, it would be " a certain and most disastrous failure." 
Such was then my own opinion, and when Smith met, 
at his own room in the Revere House, Boston, May 24, 
1858, with Theodore Parker, Dr . Howe, George L. 
Stearns, and myself, to decide whether Brown should be 
allowed to go on at that time, Mr, Smith was an active 
participant in the discussion. It resulted in sending 
Brown back to Kansas until such a time as he could more 
safely undertake his Southern campaign. 

My recollection is clear that Mr. Smith then fully un- 
derstood the matter, and unreservedly sanctioned the 
agreement, as Brown himself stated it to Colonel Hig- 
ginson, and as I remember it, — viz., that Brown should 
go to Kansas for the summer and autumn of 1858, but 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 229 

should be aided to begin his Southern campaign in the 
winter and spring of 1859, when two or three thousand 
dollars should be raised for him by Messrs, Stearns, 
Smith, and the rest of us. In accordance with this agree- 
ment, in the following spring (April, 1859) Brown pre- 
sented himself at Peterboro, after delivering his twelve 
forcibly emancipated Missouri slaves in Canada, and re- 
ceived from Mr. Smith there a subscription of four hun- 
dred dollars, part of which was a note of E. B. Whitman, 
of Kansas, payable to Smith, and which Brown considered 
the same as money. With some of this four hundred 
dollars, or with money afterwards sent by Mr. Smith, 
Brown paid, in part, for his pikes, at Collinsville, Con- 
necticut, to arm the slaves of Virginia. I presume Mr. 
Smith never knew that his gift would be so used; but he 
put no restrictions on its use, and he knew that Brown 
was then on his slow way to execute the plan unfolded 
to us at Peterboro the winter before. Again, when, in 
August, 1859, Brown wrote me from Chambersburg, that 
he still wanted three hundred dollars with which to be- 
gin the attack, I sent his letter to Smith, who at once 
sent Brown a draft for a hundred dollars on the State 
Bank of Albany. I suppose tliis was his last contribution 
to Brown, and I am certain it was sent with a full general 
knowledge of what Brown would do with it. 

How then could Mr. Smith, G. L. Stearns, and Dr. 
Howe deny, as they all did, that they knew nothing of 
the Harper's Ferry attack.'^ Simply because they did 
not know, or perhaps guess, that Brown meant to begin 
there. We expected he would go farther west, into a re- 
gion less accessible, where his movements might escape 
notice for weeks, except as the alleged acts of some ma- 
rauding part3\ In this respect, and in this alone, so far 
as I know, he changed his plans of 1858, which had been 



230 Recollections of Seventy Years 

fully explained to Smith, Howe, and Stearns. Being called 
to testify at Washington, the two last named (as they 
both told me) found the questions of the Senate Com- 
mittee so unskillfully framed that they could, without 
literal falsehood, answer as they did. I do not say they 
were justified in this, but such was their own opinion. 
Probably Gerrit Smith felt also justified, at the time, 
in making public statements which told a part of the 
truth, but not the whole. He was not a witness at Wash- 
ington, being an asylum patient at Utica in that agitated 
winter of 1859-60; but in I860 and again in 1867 he 
published papers wliich, had I seen them in manuscript, 
as I did that of 1874, I should have protested against 
their publication, as I did with the more exact statement 
of the latter year. I only saw them after publication, 
too late to protest. But from 1867 until his death in 
December, 1874, I was resolved to persuade my old 
friend, if possible, to publish something more in keeping 
with the facts, and with his own magnanimity. I there- 
fore took some pains to preserve my own recollections 
and those of two other persons, who, like myself, had 
known Brown's plans, and Smith's connection with them, 
and in the Atlantic Monthly, for July, 1872, printed the 
narrative thus obtained, with many omissions of name 
and circumstance, in deference to what seemed Mr. Smith's 
sensitiveness. At some interval after this, but not until 
I had been urged by many, both friends and strangers, 
to tell the story of Brown more fully, I sent this letter 
to Mr. Smith, with whom I had kept up an occasional 
correspondence since 1859: 

" Concord, Mass., Oct. 13, 1872. 
" My dear Sir : 

" I have often been urged to publish what I knew of 
John Brown and his plans, more especially of late, since 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 231 

the appearance of some papers, respecting him in the 
Atlantic MontJily. I am inclined to think the proper 
time has come for me to do so: but as I was first ac- 
quainted with those plans in your house at Peterboro, 
where I spent a day or two with Brown in the winter of 
1857-58, I do not feel at liberty to make such publi- 
cation without consulting you. May I ask if there is any 
reason, in your opinion, why the whole truth should not 
now be told, without respect of persons? We were wit- 
nesses, and in some sense participants, in a gi-eat histori- 
cal event, in regard to which the evidence (on which 
the truth of history must rest) is every year passing 
away, by the death of persons and the decay of recollec- 
tions. I met, a week or two since, the last survivor, 
among Brown's men, of the tragic fight at Harper's 
Ferry, — Osborne Anderson, who seems to be declining 
in consumption. Before all the witnesses are dead, would 
it not be wise to put upon record the authentic facts, in 
time to have any errors in the statement pointed out and 
corrected.^ 

" Yours very truly, 

"F. B. Sanborn." 

To this Mr. Smith replied on the 19th, and Mrs. 
Smith on the 20th of October, thus: 

" F. B. Sanborn, Esq., 

" Dear Friend : I have your esteemed letter. I am 
not competent to advise in the case. When the Harper's 
Ferry affair occurred I was sick, and my brain somewhat 
diseased. That affair excited and shocked me, and a 
few weeks after I was taken to a Lunatic Asylum. From 
that day to this I have had but a hazy view of dear John 



232 Recollections of Seventy Years 

Brown's great work. Indeed, some of my impressions of 
it have, as others have told me, been quite erroneous and 
even wild. I would not, therefore, presume to pass any 
judgment in the case. Let me, however, say that my 
brain has continued to the present time to be sensitive 
in this John Brown matter, and that every now and then 
I get little or no sleep in consequence. It was so when I 
read the articles in the Atlantic you refer to. And 
now your bare proposition to write of this matter has 
given me another sleepless turn. In every such turn I 
fear a recurrence of my insanity. 

" I must not ask you to make so much account of my 
health. Nevertheless, if you could defer your contem- 
plated work until after my death (not long hence, as I 
am approaching seventy-six) you would lay me under 
great obligations to your kindness. So, too, you would, 
if in case you write it before my death [you should] 
make as sparing a use of my name as possible. 

" Poor Osborne Anderson ! I was personally acquainted 
with him. I lament his declining health. Give the brave 
and noble man my love, and the enclosed ten dollars. Mrs. 
Smith and I would be happy to see you and yours at 
our home. 

" Cordially yours, 

" Gerrit Smith.'* 

"Peterboro, Oct. 20, 1872. 
" My dear Mr. Sanborn : 

" Everything concerning dear John Brown is, in Mr. 
Smith's mind, so closely linked with his insanity, that the 
bare reading of your esteemed letter brought that pain- 
ful passage of his life back again most vividly, causing 
a rush of blood to his head, and an almost sleepless night. 
I greatly fear the effect on him of any further written 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 233 

history of Joliii Brown. Yet, if you deem it necessary 
for the pubhc good, and see it to be clearly your duty to 
write that history now, I have no right to say a word 
against it. Only let me ask you, if you should write, 
to use Mr. Smith's name as little as possible. 

" Give my love to Mrs. Sanborn. We would be very 
happy, at any time, to receive a visit from you both. 
" Sincerely your friend, 

"Ann C. Smith." 

This pathetic response, unlike any that I had 
expected, affected me deeply, and showed me, to 
my sorrow, that I had too long delayed to ask the 
important question. I reflected much on this new 
aspect of things, consulted my friends, Edwin 
Morton, Dr. Howe, and Wendell Phillips, who 
differed in opinion as to what my duty was, and 
finally replied thus: 

"Concord, Nov. 18, 1872. 
" My dear Sir : 

" I have delayed answering your note of the 19th Oc- 
tober, containing a proposition on the subject of my 
proposed reminiscences of John Brown, because I did 
not wish to answer without due consideration. I am 
not satisfied that the course you suggest is the wisest or 
best ; but such is my regard for your wishes in the mat- 
ter (as testified by my silence heretofore) that I am 
willing to accede to it as far as concerns all mention of 
yourself. I doubt whether I have the right any longer to 
withhold information on other points, where the truth is 
liable to be obscured or misrepresented in course of years : 
and therefore I cannot pledge myself farther. And I 
could wish that all of us who had cognizance, in a greater 



234 Recollections of Seventy Years 

or less degree, of John Brown's plans, would commit to 
paper their recollection of the facts, for mutual examina- 
tion and correction : publication may be deferred till all 
are convinced that the proper time has come. I urge this 
upon all whom I see or correspond with ; having no other 
wish in the matter than that the whole and exact truth 
shall be eventually known to the world, as it is now known 
to God and John Brown. 

" I regret that my former communication should have 
caused you any uneasiness, though I cannot reproach 
myself in the matter, since I only took the friendly and 
direct course in addressing you on the subject. Pray 
present my regards to Mrs. Smith, by whose note I was 
deeply touched, and believe me ever 

" Yours very truly, 

"F. B. Sanborn." 

To this letter Mr. Smith responded in a few 
days, and in these words: 

" Nov. 24, 1872. 
" My dear Friend : 

" I have your letter. Your tender regard for my 
peace of mind touches my heart and calls out gratitude. 
I thank you warmly for concluding to omit the mention 
of my name in what you write. I wish that when you 
have written it, you would visit me (at my expense) and 
read it to me. You can help me to clear up my cloudy 
recollections, and then I may see nothing in the way of 
your adding my name to other names in your narrative. 
My wife joins me in love to yourself and wife. Bring 
her with you when you visit us. 

" Cordially yours, 

" Gerrit Smith." 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 235 

I did not, of course, accept this invitation on 
the terms mentioned, but in one of my journeys 
with my son Thomas, in July, 1874, I took Peter- 
boro in my way home, and there spent two pleasant 
days, talking with the Smiths concerning the plans 
and achievements of Brown, about which I was 
beginning to write the papers that came out in the 
Atlantic for 1875. I found no serious want of 
harmony in our recollections, except that mine were 
more distinct, and that they both were strongly im- 
pressed that Brown contemplated the escape of 
slaves to Canada. That was indeed one alternative, 
to be adopted if he could not maintain himself on 
slave territory, as he hoped. This phase of the 
question will appear in the paper soon to be cited. 
It had been in my hands six months when I visited 
Peterboro for the last time. Late in 1873, upon 
some occasion now forgotten, I had written to JMrs. 
Smith gently renewing my request for a statement 
from Mr. Smith. I kept no copy, but the tenor 
of my note may be inferred from my answer from 
Mrs. Smith, who wrote me thus : 

"Peterboro, Jan. 1, 1874. 

" Dear Mr. Sanborn : 

" I have received and read your good letter, but I can- 
not yet read it to Mr. Smith. The painful sensations con- 
tinue in his brain, and his physician wishes him to be 
kept from all excitement, as there is a tendency to con- 
gestion. His memory is so confused concerning the things 
connected with his insanity, that I think it would be im- 
possible for him to make a correct statement. As soon 



236 Recollections of Seventy Years 

as I find it will do to bring the matter before him, I 
will do so, and let you know the result. 

" Affectionately, 

"Ann C. Smith." 

Soon after this came the following paper by 
Mr. Smith, to which his wife added a postscript, 
Mr. Smith an amendatory note, and I an indorse- 
ment. This sheet I hold, and it was among the 
papers given by me to Mr. Frothingham for peru- 
sal. No part of it has ever before been printed: 

" Copy of a Statement signed hy Gerrit Smith, January 3, 
1874, but Drawn up in the Handwriting of Mrs. Smith, 
xcho has added a Postscript, to which her own signature 
is attached. 

" Agreeably to the suggestion in Mr. Sanborn's letter 
to JNIrs. Smith, I give an account of my acquaintance with 
some of John Brown's movements. I dictate the writing, 
and make it very brief, because I am suffering from an 
attack of vertigo. 

" Mr. Edwin Morton, of Boston, was for several years 
a member of my family. During that time Mr. Frank 
B. Sanborn, of Concord, Massachusetts, repeatedly visited 
him. They were classmates in Harvard University. On 
his visit in February, 1858, he met John Brown, who 
often took my home in his way between Kansas and his 
residence in Essex County, New York. He and Mr. 
Sanborn were much in Mr. Morton's room. I was in it a 
part or all of the time whilst Brown was reading his 
plan for entering the South and summoning the slaves to 
the mountains, where they could defend themselves and 
thence escape to Canada. This plan, I have been in- 
formed, was drawn up by himself not long before, under 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 237 

the roof of Mr. Frederick Douglass in Rochester. My 
heart responded to his merciful interest in the victims of 
oppression, and he had my warmest wishes for his suc- 
cess. I had but little conversation with Brown respecting 
his enterprise. He told me he was not yet decided in what 
State to begin it. As the execution of it was long delayed, 
I thought it was abandoned. His invasion of Harper's 
Ferry in the fall of 1859 grew, as I supposed, out of an 
entirely new and suddenly adopted plan. I was aston- 
ished to hear of it, so unlike was it to that of going to 
the mountains. I came afterwards to believe that this 
invasion was in pursuance of the revival of his old plan. 

" He addressed a large anti-slavery meeting in this 
village in April, 1859. I never saw him after that time, 
and I kept up no communication with him. Hearing, 
some months after through another person, that he was 
in Chambersburg and in need of money, I directed a hun- 
dred dollars to be sent to him. His being there led me 
to believe that he was on his way to the mountains of 
Maryland or Virginia. 

" Brown was a brave and noble and emphatically re- 
ligious man. He lived for his race, and especially for 
the wronged and unfortunate. I had frequent dealings 
with him. From first to last he purchased three farms 
from me. He was the patron and friend of my little 
colored colony in his neighborhood. I frequently gave 
him moneys to promote his slave-delivering and other be- 
nevolent purposes, — in the aggregate, however, only about 
a thousand dollars. This would have been none too much 
to compensate him for his self-sacrificing interest in my 
colony. His dependence for means to execute his South- 
em undertaking was, as he informed me, mainly on the 
good and generous Mr. Steams, of Boston. 

" It is but proper for me to say that I have dictated 



238 Recollections of Seventy Years 

this writing with some distrust of my recollections, both 
because the occurrences were so many years ago, and be- 
cause of my severe illness in the latter part of 1859 and 
the early part of 1860. 

(Signed) " Gerrit Smith. 
" Peterboro, Jan. 3, 1874." 

" Mr. Sanborn will do what he pleases with the fore- 
going statement, provided he shall have Mr. Morton's 
consent. Mr. Smith would not have the name of any 
living person used in this connection without such per- 
son's consent. Immediately after the Harper's Ferry 
affair he destroyed all the letters touching Brown's 
movements which he had received from persons in any 
degree privy to those movements ; and he took it for 
granted that his own similar letters to others had also 
been destroyed. 

(Signed) "Ann C. Smith." 

Mr. Smith afterwards (January 18th), through Mr. 
Morton, whom I saw every day or two at his law office 
in Boston, requested me to " strike out the sentence be- 
ginning ' I never saw him after that time,' and supply 
its place with the following sentence, — ' I never saw him 
after that time, and I had no further communication 
with him save a single exchange of letters regarding a 
note for $250 which I held against him.' " 

Upon the original sheet containing the above state- 
ments, after showing them to Edwin Morton, I endorsed 
these words : " According to the distinct recollections of 
Mr. Morton and myself, the above statement is incom- 
plete, and fails to give the more important facts of the 
case. We can therefore make no public use of it. 

(Signed) " F. B. Sanborn. 

" Concord, Jan. 25, 1874." 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 239 

In my reply to Mrs. Smith a week earlier (January 16, 
1874) I had explained to her that all the compromising 
letters in my possession at the time of the arrest of 
Brown, and all that came to me in the following winter, 
from the archives of the Brown family at North Elba, 
were destroyed by me; but some held by others escaped. 
I was, in fact, visited by Colonel Charles Miller, Mr. 
Smith's son-in-law, in October, 1859, to make sure, on 
Mr. Smith's account, that his letters were destroyed, — 
he having previously visited John Brown, Jr., in Ohio, for 
the same purpose, as he told me. 

Brief and incomplete as Mr. Smith's latest statement 
was, it has yet much importance as a piece of evidence. 
It supplies some omissions in his printed declaration of 
1867, and directly contradicts an earlier declaration 
(of 1860) in a vital point. But it omits to say that 
Brown had been in Smith's house four days when I ar- 
rived; that Brown had expressly named that house as a 
place of secret meeting for Parker, Stearns, Higginson, 
and myself ; that my sole errand there was to meet Brown 
and his friends, while Brown's sole errand was to lay 
before us in secret his long-cherished scheme. Mfs. 
Smith's postscript supplies one important fact, — that Mr. 
Smith himself directed the destruction of papers relating 
to Brown, and suppo.cd that others had taksn the same 
precaution, as I certainly had. The inference from all 
these documents is so plain that I need not stop to point 
it out. 

Indeed, I have written thus far with sorrow and re- 
luctance, — feelings constantly mine ever since the public 
attitude taken by Mr. Smith in the year 1860. To me 
he assumed no such attitude, but was ever ready to de- 
clare that my memory of the affair was better than his, 
and at my last interviews, in July, 1874, five months 



240 Recollections of Seventy Years 

preceding his death, he said the same. I have no re- 
proaches to bring against him. 

He was my friend, faithful and just to me; 

yet I could not fail to see that from some cause to me 
unknown, alienation of mind, regard for those whom he 
loved, or perhaps the moral perplexity that so often 
besets such a crisis as that in which John Brown and his 
friends found themselves in 1859-60, Gerrit Smith had 
swerved from what Wordsworth, in his " Dion " calls the 

Ideal path of right. 
More fair than Heaven's broad causeway paved with stars. 

I have never been able to satisfy myself, and cannot, 
therefore, hope to explain to others the reason why Mr. 
Smith shrank from a full disclosure, and preferred to 
pass away with the secret unspoken. It was not for lack 
of courage or of magnanimity, certainly not for lack of 
admiration of Brown and his deed; nor through any 
disloyalty to those, living or dead, associated with Ger- 
rit Smith in that and other enterprises undertaken for 
liberty. Nor was it, I venture to say, with any futile 
hope of averting the course of history, or mitigating the 
verdict of mankind. Gerrit Smith was not of that quality 
or temper of soul ; he was, like Dion, 

Of spirit too capacious to require 

That Destiny her course should change; too just 

To his OAvn native greatness to desire 

That wretched boon, days lengthened by mistrust. 

I prefer to retain that opinion which I early formed of 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 241 

my venerable friend; his errors of judgment were but 
the slight accidents of human frailty, not to be cited as 
instances of a character that, in all essential traits, was 
lofty, generous, and self-devoted. 

F. B. Sanborn. 
Concord, March 15, 1878. 



The exigency contemplated when I wrote as 
above, soon passed away. General Cochrane 
visited me in Concord, saw the letters of his uncle 
and aunt, and was satisfied that I had told the 
truth. He withdrew his misapprehensions, and 
sent me, as evidence of confidence, the fine por- 
traits of the Smiths which have since ornamented 
my hall, with those of Emerson, Thoreau, and 
Walt Whitman, the latter, in his broad and loving 
humanity, and a little in his personality, recalling 
Gerrit Smith. I have since printed biographies 
of Brown and Dr. Howe, in which the story of the 
Harper's Ferry foray, so far as Brown's secret 
committee was involved, has been told; the son of 
Major Stearns has published a life of his father, and 
the daughter of Dr. Howe has done the same. In 
these books other facts appear. I print this old 
letter, that the record may be complete, and less 
room be left for vexatious disputes after Colonel 
Higginson and myself are gone. 

During this eventful winter of 1859-60, our as- 
sociate in the conspiracy of Brown, Theodore 
Parker, was in Rome, vainly seeking to postpone 
the hour of his own death, by foreign residence. 
He died in Florence in the following ^lay and is 



242 Recollections of Seventy Years 

buried there, under a monument designed by the 
hand of his friend, the sculptor Story. Before 
Parker knew accurately the facts concerning Ger- 
ret Smith, and while he was anticipating that Dr. 
Howe, and perhaps myself, might join him in Italy, 
he wrote as follows to Smith, whom he knew well. 
The copy came to me in Mrs. Parker's clear hand- 
writing, along with the mass of manuscripts she 
bequeathed to me at her own death in 1875. 

^, , ^r c -.1 " Rome, 16th Feb., 1860. 

My dear Mr. Smith: 

It is with great pain that I have heard of the illness 
which the recent distressing events have brought on your 
much-enduring frame, wliich was so shattered by illness 
before. When I saw you last I did not think that my 
next letter would be from such a place or for such a 
purpose. But such is the uncertainty of all mortal things. 
Some of the rumors relate that you will perhaps come to 
Europe for health. If this be so, I trust I shall have 
the good fortune to meet you somewhere. We have many 
Americans at Rome, — two or three hundred, it is said, — 
of whom about forty are from Boston, not to mention 
the permanent inhabitants. So you see one need not 
lack companionship. Besides, here are many more from 
Massachusetts and New England. 

I feel great anxiety about the immediate future of 
America ; the remote future I have no doubts about. 
We must see much darker hours before it is daylight, 
— darker and also bloody, I think ; for nations seldom set- 
tle their difficulties without passion — & so without what 
comes of passion. The Slaveholders are in great wrath. 
I am waiting for the Supreme Court of the United States, 
(in the Lemmon case), to decide, as it must, that a master 
may take his slaves in transit through a free State, & 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 243 

keep them in it a reasonable time, subject not only to 
his own caprice, but defiant of the Laws of that State. 
Certainly, the Slaveholders must have eminent domain 
over the free States & bondage must exercise Right 
of way in New York & New England. — Next year, or 
the year after, it must decide for the African Slave trade ! 
" There is one general grievance," said Oliver Cromwell 
in the House of Commons, " & that is the law ! " 

But I did not mean to worry you with a long letter, 
so with heartiest sympathy for your sufferings and pro- 
found respect for your Character & services, believe me. 
Faithfully and truly yours, 

Theodore Paeker. 

When I wrote my first biography of John 
Brown, for the History of his native Connecticut 
township, Torrington, I told the story of Mr. 
Smith's connection with the Virginia plans, in sub- 
stance as I have told it here. But I inserted in 
the small edition separately printed, a few copies 
of a fac-simile of a note from Brown to his son, 
John Brown, Jr., which has never elsewhere been 
published, I believe. I put some twenty copies of 
this volume, with the heliotyped sheet bound in, — 
the unmistakable script of Brown — in a few li- 
braries, for reference, in case anyone should have 
doubts about its authenticity. It is found on page 
144. 

Up to this time I had not supposed that John 
Brown was present at the Pottawatomie executions 
in May, — relying too much on the statements of 
Redpath and the brother of Brown, without ask- 



244 Recollections of Seventy Years 

ing from Brown himself the exact truth in the 
matter. I had, therefore, stated my behef too 
2)ositively in my book of 1878. But late in 1879 
(December 6), James Townsley, one of Brown's 
company on that occasion, made a full statement 
confessing his own presence and participation, 
and charging that Brown had fired one of the fatal 
shots that night. This was not true; but in the 
main I have found out that Townsley was truth- 
ful. Soon after this matter was brought to my 
knowledge, I sought an interview with Owen 
Brown, who was also present at the deed, and ob- 
tained from him the precise account which I pub- 
lished in my second " Life of Brown," in 1885 
(pages 267-70). I then learned that most of 
Brown's family who were not with him that night 
were as ignorant as I had been of what Brown had 
done, although he had always admitted his re- 
sponsibility for the deed. There were many in 
Kansas, however, who had reason to know that 
John Brown was present and conmianding in that 
tragedy; and when I visited Kansas for the first 
time in 1882, I saw several men who had long 
known, or been morally certain of the facts. I 
have seen no reason to doubt that this execu- 
tion was one of the sad necessities of the times, 
fully justified in Brown's mind and that of the 
most of the residents in Kansas. But it was made 
the occasion for much vilification of Brown and 
his friends by the men whom the fame of Brown 
had eclipsed, or who had honestly differed from 
him in their judgment of what the need of the time 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 245 

was. The opinions of good men will always dif- 
fer, I suppose, as to the merit or demerit of Brown 
in ordering these executions, and seeing them per- 
formed. It is the belief of the best authorities 
in Kansas history that the men slain had a suffi- 
cent, though irregular trial. That they had well 
earned their violent death, under their own code of 
violence, is now quite clear; the pretense of their 
innocence is a sham, invented by men who knew 
better, and accepted by ignorant or half -informed 
persons, who would justify the killing of a bur- 
glar, but shudder at the wild justice of lynch law, 
— sometimes the best code for semi-barbarous com- 
munities. I have in my book cited the testimony 
and opinions of the Free State men of Kansas; but 
here is a bit of evidence that will be new to most of 
my readers. General Shelby, a Missourian, who 
joined his pro-slavery neighbors in trying to force 
slavery upon Kansas, and who rose to be a briga- 
dier in the Confederate service, was afterward " re- 
constructed " and made United States marshal of 
western INIissouri. To a friend of mine, who knew 
him well while holding that office, and residing at 
Kansas City in Missouri, he said in substance: 

" Brown was right, and did just what he ought to have 
done in killing the Doyles and others at Pottawatomie. 
I would have done in Missouri what he did in Kansas. 
I was myself in Kansas fighting the Free-State men — 
had no business there on any such errand, and ought to 
have been shot for being there. John Brown was the only 
man then in Kansas who seemed to realize fully the 



246 Recollections of Seventy Years 

situation. He would have shot me, perhaps, if he had met 
me in Kansas, — and it would have been no more than 
his duty." 

Among other Kansas authorities I cited August 
Bondi, a German Jew, who early settled in Kan- 
sas and served under John Brown in May and 
June, 1856. He afterward became the police 
magistrate of Salina, a considerable town in Kan- 
sas, and died there at a good old age a year or 
two since. His daughter called at my residence 
in Concord the past summer. I quoted freely in 
my " Life and Letters of John Brown " from the 
German and English publications of Judge Bondi, 
and from his letters to me; but at his request I 
abstained from publishing a letter of his, written 
early in 1884, long before my book was published. 
There is now no reason why it should be withheld 
from publication, since both he and his friend, 
Theodore Wiener (commonly called "Weiner") 
are dead. Wiener took part in the Pottawatomie 
executions of May 24, 1856, but Bondi did not. 
Dating at Salina, January 25, 1884, he wrote me: 

" At the instance of many friends I concluded to pub- 
lish my [German] articles on John Brown in English 
also ; and in the Salina Herald of yesterday I com- 
menced. . . . You say in your last that I relate 
some things that no one else does, which is just what 
hundreds have told me before. Still, I have carefully 
refrained from stating anything I could not implicitly 
vouch for. Newspaper correspondents of those days 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 247 

would not, dured not, give him the credit he deserved; 
because if they had, Robinson, Jim Lane, Pomeroy, etc., 
would have dwindled into insignificance. And John Brown, 
while he cared about results, never was very anxious to 
have them credited to himself. There always were, even 
in 1856, secret intrigues at work to detract from his 
achievements ; so we need not be astonished if hving dogs 
continue to bark at the dead lion. John Brown was the 
most aflPectionate of parents, the kindest of friends, and 
at every opportunity he lectured, instructed and ad- 
monished us boys, just as I report. For nothing did I 
admire him so much as for the conversion of my friend 
Wiener from a rank pro-slavery man to an uncompro- 
mising abolitionist. 

" Theodore Wiener is a Jew, as I am, and as Benjamin 
was. He came from Germany in 1847, and merchan- 
dized in the southern States, coming to St. Louis in 1854. 
There Benjamin and myself became acquainted with him. 
We two left St. Louis for Kansas early in 1855; as we 
parted from Wiener, he wished that the Southerners 
would assist us to an early return. [As being anti- 
slavery men, not wanted in Kansas.] In September, 
1855, Benjamin returned to St. Louis, when Wiener con- 
sented to come to Kansas and open a store on my claim 
at Musquito Creek, four miles from Dutch Henry's Cross- 
ing, pledging himself to Benjamin that he would run his 
store and let politics alone. Wiener then invested from 
seven to eight thousand dollars in goods and went to 
Kansas — I, in the meantime, being very sick, had left for 
St. Louis two days before he reached my claim. So I 
did not see Wiener again till about May, 1856, when he 
came to St. Louis to buy goods, and I returned to 
Kansas with him. Judge of my surprise when he con- 
versed with me as a radical Free State man ; and he was 



248 llecoltections of Seventy Years 

free to acknowledge that the change was mainly due to his 
intimacy with the Browns. 

" When the Pottawatomie and Osawatomie Rifles, in 
which companies the Browns were, started May 21, 1856, 
to assist Lawrence, some 65 men in all, Wiener furnished 
them as a gift all the necessary provisions. His store 
was soon after completely plundered; and I think no 
Free State man lost as much in actual money that year 
as Wiener did. His loss footed up some $8,000 ; some of 
the men in Lawrence presented bills for greater losses, 
but of course there was no such actual loss. 

" It might be said that Brown's sons followed him to 
the fight of Black Jack prompted by filial affection, (as 
they were) ; Kaiser and myself, who were fresh from the 
battlefields of Europe, did likewise from our sympathy 
for Liberty. Cochrane and the Moores had been outraged 
by the Border Ruffians in their own persons and families. 
But what else caused the presence of the merchant Wiener 
in that camp, but the spiritual power wielded by that 
hero of truth and virtue, who conquered the friend of 
slavery by the attraction of a superior mind.'' I always 
considered the proselyting of Wiener a greater feat than 
the victory at Black Jack. 

" Wiener, who took part in the so-called Pottawatomie 
massacre, has never to any extent conversed with me 
about it ; he never would allow himself to be drawn out. 
I have a theory of my own on that matter, — a suspicion 
that Wilkinson was a Mason, as Wiener is, and that 
Wiener at the time did not know that fact. Should I, 
during my travels in next Fall's political campaign, 
happen in Wiener's neighborhood, I will see him and try 
to persuade him to tell what he knows." 

At the date of this letter James Townsley had 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 249 

made his confession of participation in the exe- 
cutions at Dutch Henry's, but I think Wiener 
never made any statement public concerning it. 
A year later than this (January, 1885) , but before 
the publication of my book, my friend, Dr. H. L. 
Wayland, then of Philadelphia, sent me a letter of 
Frederick Douglass, afterwards printed in the 
" National Baptist " of February 12, 1885, which 
is worth preserving: 

" I have never been able to entirely explain and recon- 
cile the heroic conduct of Captain Brown with that gen- 
tleness of temper and tenderness of heart which he always 
exhibited among his friends, and especially in the pres- 
ence of little children. He spent a number of weeks in 
my house at Rochester,* and 1 had many opportunities 
to get a peep into his soul ; and in it I found the highest 
sense of justice, a sincere love of mankind, and a total 
absence of selfishness. There was another thing about 
him quite remarkable. No matter how inconsistent, im- 
possible and desperate a thing might appear to others, 
if John Brown said he would do it, he was sure to be 
believed. His words were never taken for empty bravado. 
... We are still too near his times to judge him 
broadly and justly." 

An old townsman of Brown's at Hudson, in 
Ohio (Mr. Loren Case, who died a few years ago) , 
left this interesting reminiscence of his friend: 

"The last time I saw John Brown was in Hudson, 
(1859) a short time before he went to Harper's Ferry. 
The night before, he had spoken in Ellsworth Hall, on 

* In January and February, 1858. 



250 Recollections of Seventy Years 

the corner opposite the Catholic church. His topic was 
the Declaration of Independence; his main effort was to 
show what it cost the old pioneers of Liberty to gain 
and maintain their rights for themselves and their pos- 
terity ; many of whom, having pledged their lives, for- 
tunes and sacred honor to maintain these liberties, sealed 
the pledge with their blood. I met him on his way to the 
train the next morning. He was walking with his hands 
behind him, in deep thought, seemingly not noticing me 
until I got within reach of his hand, which then came 
quickly from the skirt of his coat to grasp mine, and the 
greeting came with his cheerful voice and smile. The 
topic of the night before was still on his mind. He said 
he could not do justice to it when he spoke; could not 
find words to express himself, nor impress the minds of 
his hearers, especially those who profess to be one with 
Him who came to break the yoke and let the oppressed 
go free. Such Christians were guilty of that sin of the 
Pharisees, hypocrisy, denounced by Christ ; and if they 
did not break the American yoke and let the slaves go 
free, they would have to suffer the penalty, pronounced 
against the Pharisees, even if it took away their lives 
and their fortunes." 

This was the constant warning given by Brown, 
which the Civil War verified. The last letter 
which he sent to Ohio from his Charlestown prison 
was to this same Mr. Case; in it he said — (Decem- 
ber 2, 1859, the very morning of his death) : 

" Your most kind and cheering letter of Nov. 25 is 
received. Such an outburst of warm-hearted sympathy, 
not only for myself, but also for those who have no helper, 
compels me to steal a moment from those allowed me in 



Aftermath of the John Brown Foray 251 

which to prepare for my last great change, in order to 
send you a few words. Such a feeling as you manifest 
makes you to shine (in my estimation) in the midst of 
a wicked and perverse generation, as a light in the world. 
May you ever prove yourself equal to the high estimate 
I have placed on you ! Pure and undefiled religion before 
God and the Father is, as I understand it, an active, 
(not a dormant) principle, 

" I do not undertake to direct any more about my 
children. I leave that now entirely to their excellent 
mother, from whom I have just parted. I send you my 
' salutation with my own hand.' Remember me to all 
yours and my dear friends. 

" Your friend, 

" John Brown." 

Mr. Case, to whom this characteristic letter was 
sent, was six years younger than Brown, and had 
been his Sunday-school pupil in Hudson, before 
1820. Of Brown's manner of speaking in youth, 
Mr. Case said: 

" He had a very mild way to express his views, espe- 
cially to the young, and in a practical manner to show 
the true principle of Christianity, that it was more to 
give than to receive. In conversation, or when debating 
with others, if they showed anger in their expression or 
gestures, he would stand with his hands folded behind 
him, and in a very calm, decided way utter his views, 
without raising his hand to give force to his argument ; 
but he showed by the motion of his head and body that 
it came from the heart to convince you." 

In the years when I knew Brown, this cahn- 



252 Recollections of Seventy Years 

ness of manner sometimes gave way to animated 
speech and gestures, — so deeply did he feel the 
coldness of those he addressed on his one great sub- 
ject; but on his trial, the mildness of his earlier 
manner returned to him, and his last speech was 
delivered with all the quiet and moderation which 
INIr. Case describes. This mild and humble Chris- 
tian, this practical disciple of Jeiferson, was a 
pioneer and hero of emancipation. Others had 
much share in that work, — but its two chief mar- 
tja's were John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, — 
of whom one began and the other completed the 
forcible freeing of 4,000,000 slaves in the United 
States. In oratory, too, their names will stand 
connected; for Emerson declared that Brown's 
speech after conviction and Lincoln's Gettysburg 
oration were the high-water mark of eloquence in 
;the nineteenth century. 



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